Labour should end Pre-U examinations

Few, if any,will have any problems with Labour`s promises to "radically transform Britain`s education system", and that "teachers would be at the heart of it". Most of the problems which have developed since Gove`s outrageous abandonment of advice from experts could have been avoided had the then Secretary of State listened to teachers.

 There is today, however, one very secret area of the education system which involves teachers very heavily, though sadly the teachers in question belong to the private sector. Who knew, before the recent scandal involving examination-cheating at Eton and Winchester, that there existed examinations taken by privately-educated students in this country, which were equivalent to A-levels but not the same, and whose grades are recognised by universities as entrance qualifications? They are called Pre-Us, and often include questions set by teachers in the private sector, who also mark them.

     With no limits to the proportion of students universities can enrol from private schools, only private sector pupils taking these examinations, and independent school staff, in many cases, actually setting the examinations, the current post-16 assessment system is both unfair and flawed. 

     On the Pre-U website, Winchester College recommends these examinations for use by other public schools, because they "are very liberating for teachers". I bet they are!

 Having taught A-levels for over forty years, and being "unliberated", I knew nothing about the existence of such examinations, and I doubt if many of today`s teachers in state schools realise that their students are actually competing for top grades and university places with privately educated pupils whose "A-level grades" will have been earned in a rather different way. Imagine how easier teaching becomes when, for example, having to cover three hundred years of history, and knowing which questions will be on the paper, even if no actual "cheating" is involved! How many state-school students have been denied access to their first choice university because of better grades achieved in these A-level substitutes?

    Labour must ensure these "examinations" are no longer viable as university entrance qualifications immediately!