More children got three As at A-level in the country’s fee-paying schools than in the entire population of children at comprehensives."

[AubergineKenobi]

Says Toby Young in today's Telegraph:

Article

Does anyone know what percent of A-levels are taken by children in fee-paying schools?

happy, top universities mind about grades and their offers are based upon grades. Points are an irrelevance really.

Mind you, I like the Pre-U.

I to be honest with you know nothing about exam boards and didn't realise there was considered to be any difference between them but surely it would make sense that everyone used the same exam board in fact why do we need different exam boards? This would get rid of the idea that one is easier/harder than another. Also if universities discriminate either now (is there any evidence for this?) or in the future, perhaps to enable them to distinguish between the brilliant and the able, due to I'm assuming the enormous number of A's then at least in one aspect the playing field would be more level.
Obviously the IB and Pre U would have different boards but they're different exams and the decision to go down that road rests with the school and ultimately the parents who choose to send their children there.
Yellowstone I only mentioned the UCAS points thing because the fact that the Pre U grades carry more UCAS grades was brought up by another MN poster on another posting. I didn't know this as my children are not of that age for me to know whether this matters. I am interested that you like the Pre U one mum recently posted on MN her view that it was unfair to make some children sit a much harder exam just to prove how academic you are when the same university entrance can be achieved with A levels! I understand from teachers that it teaches a subject in a much more joined up fashion and that the level of analysis required means that the very able are more stretched and thus enjoy it more.

Here is an interesting article from yesterday's Telegraph about the relative value of grade A "A" levels at different schools:

Grade A's from differnt schools

On the usefulness of Latin to learning German, your DS wasn't making it up: there are many ways that the structure of German is like Latin and unlike English, so that if someone learns Latin from age 8 some aspects of German grammer can be explained in terms of the equivalent in Latin rather than explained in terms of English. For example, the dative case.

An interesting article and perhaps explains why many top schools like Eton Win Coll and St Paul's are sending more and more each year to the Ivy League.
A few years ago whilst on a guided tour a teacher from one of these was telling me that recently they sometimes struggle to understand decisions made by Oxford and Cambridge; apparently the "less able" were being offered places over the "truly gifted and talented." In the past the "less able" student would probably have been advised not to even apply but the truly able would have been snapped up.

The thing is, you don't need to be clever to be a high achiever. So it's less a case of private schools getting the cleverest children (not synonymous with 'high achieving') than of them stuffing the kids to the gills with mark schemes and feeding them all the ideas you need to get into the top bands. Less time to do this in state schools, bigger classes etc.
Arts A levels do very little to prove who will be the best literary critic or the best linguist or the best historian. It rewards the people who know the mark scheme to the letter....not much else.

• don't need to be clever to be a high achiever in the UK, I mean.

I think thats very true comes back to my posting above re: bright but lazy boys at uni. There are many very able at uni who will not do as well as their grades predicted because in the more relaxed environment of university they just cant be bothered and are shall we say distracted by more enjoyable activities!
I also agree with quirrelquarrel being super bright does not necessarily make you good/successful/happy in you particular occupation. Life is so much more complicated than your level of intelligence predicts your 'success' at work.

I too was surprised at some of the Oxbridge decisions this year, based purely on people who did/didn't get a place. Very, very bright/enthusiastic/talented boy didn't get a place- girl who doesn't have much to say apart from what she's appropriated from critics/the textbook did. This boy could talk forever about his subject and make it interesting- this girl couldn't hold a conversation about a book she was reading. That sounds nasty, but I thought they were typical of the kind of Oxbridge material vs. people who could get 3A* in August. Obviously not.

happygardening I may have been projecting from another thread I'd just left - where there was some posturing (and vicarious self-flattery) as to the relative difficulty of GCSEs and IGCSEs and a lot of talk about how absurdly easy GCSEs are these days. A small clutch of GCSE parents defended their schools and their young, myself included. Then I came over and saw what seemed to be more of the same.

quirrelquarrel it does sound a tad nasty I'm afraid. Perhaps the girl in question has hidden depths. Do you know she parrots critics? Perhaps she comes to the same conclusions without having read what they say. Anyhow, the tutors must have seen something. As for the boy, there are hard cases every year, with too few places to accomodate all those who would do well with a place. It's very bad luck when it happens - and that final decision really can turn on luck. Anyhow, it's always dangerous to generalise from the particular and it could be that you're basing your judgment on a school sample which isn't all that big.

The corollary of your argument about mark schemes etc. is that the top grades in less well resourced state schools do mean something then? Looking at the A* grades in the past two years I'd say the exams are entirely fit for purpose - in History and English too - and are not easily capable of being dismissed as rewarding those who are merely adept at fancy footwork with mark schemes but require something more.

Do you think there's will soon be an exam board snobbery? "My DC's exam board is harder than yours" etc. In a desperate attempt to distinguish one A* pupil from another.

Not surprising really is it?

I went to a fee-paying school. There were 3 pupils in my history class, 4 in my French class and the giddy heights of 5 in my English class. Do you think that might have helped a bit?

But this is not the reality at university so why just before going to university are small classes apparently so important? I can see its useful at primary level but I'm just less convinced at 6th form level. Surely its down to individual motivation and school expectation.

No I don't think the universities will get into that sort of finesse happygardening but some MNers might :)

Class sizes are absolutely crucial at A Level, in both Sciences and Arts.

when they get to uni, they will be lectured in groups of up to 200 and then left to it
a bit of a shock if they were spoon fed at school

It will indeed! It was for me.

But the thread was about A levels acheived and I can't think of a better way of improving them than by having a low pupil to teacher ratio. If you had any question or problems you could talk about them whenever you wanted to. You had a close relationship, not only with the teacher but also with the other pupils so there was no awkwardness about speaking up, everyone was interested in the subject so no-one there because they had to be. It was a fantastic experience. My DC will be going to the local college. It's a good one, Ofsted rated outstanding for several inspection running, but it won't be the same as my experience at A level.

At my A Level crammer the max class size was 7 and BY GOLLY they got results!

It isn't about spoon-feeding though TalkinPeace, it's about time per pupil for individual support including marking and feedback, extra help where there are problems or a lack of understanding etc. Also about optimum numbers for discussion so that all are fully involved. An A Level teacher with 30 pupils in his class will have an enormous workload to support them fully in the way that a good teacher would want to do. State schoolers can be at a huge disadvantage in that situation without an utterly dedicated teacher prepared to work incredibly hard.

Arguably the better the class size (though a class can be too small), the more chance there is of a teacher being able to properly develop in his pupils precisely the independent learning skills required at university.

Cross-posted with OrmIrian.

I did my O and A Levels in the 1980s at a grammar school. And I can tell you that the school was obsessed with hunting down the toughest exam board for each subject. We did the Oxford and Oxford and Cambridge boards. The school was adamant that universities knew that our achievements were greater.

I remember my history teacher bringing in papers from another board sat at the neighbouring grammar school, and how we beat our breasts at how much easier the questions were, particularly for maths.

And, of course, who cared? I doubt whether the university admissions tutors stroked their beards in knowing approval upon seeing an Oxford board "B" compared with a London board "A".

Oh yes, it's something which several people have remarked on about her (yes- that is bitchy! sorry). No comparison between the two in any case, he was head and shoulders above most. She is quite intelligent, very good memory etc, just not particularly brilliant and out of the box...but my point was that indeed perhaps Oxbridge is changing what it wants. Who knows. I can't pretend to.

I did think it might come across like that. But I think it's simply that the people who do get top grades are likely to have gone to the teacher and asked, checked the website, really researched what exactly they had to do, whereas someone who really was brilliant might not bother to do that, would write an undergrad level essay without knowing when to duck and when to sprint, and get half marks. It's harder to stop people from slipping through the net when you have 25 in a class, half of which are getting B grades when they could be getting A grades and only a couple are getting E grades when they could have As. An expert on Shakespeare would find it hard to get full marks in an English A level essay, I would be prepared to bet- it is so narrow.

@Talkinpeace2 Not at Cambridge they won't.

@gramercy In the 1980s Oxford and Cambridge was not the hardest board for maths, that was JMB followed closely by London.

@gramercy And in fact, when I went up to read maths at Cambridge the tutors did make the point that JMB was a harder board for Maths than the others (I came from London and all my exams were London board). I think there may have been a bit of regional pride there though since the tutors who were fond of making that point were form the North.

quirrel I'd tend to defer to the tutors on this. Oxford and Cambridge quite clearly put a great deal of effort into seeking out those they judge to have the most potential; they're highly unlikely to suddenly adopt a policy of prioritising Duristol rejects.

I'm glad to say that at my DC school those disappointed have overwhelmingly been gracious in defeat, which is the way it should be.

gramercy it's not the questions that matter in History, it's the answers (ok, peeved Univ of London Board A grade ).