A-level results fiasco

With so many things completely wrong and unfair about this year`s A-level results` procedure, one dreads to think what will be the outcome after Thursday`s GCSE results (Star, 14/08/20)! What is absolutely clear is that giving so little credence to teachers` expert evaluation of their students` progress, and so much to pupils` previous results and the schools` previous performance, is quite simply wrong! Research has shown that past results to be taken into account should not be GCSEs taken two years earlier, as they do not indicate the improvements most pupils make, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The teachers' predicted grades and orders of merit should have gone to the same subject markers as in ordinary years, along with four or five samples of pupils' work, and the final grades decided after the usual careful moderation. By persisting with such an obviously flawed system this government shows itself not only lacking trust in the teaching profession and completely out of touch with the workings of state education, but also intent on exacerbating inequality rather than reducing it! Strangely there appears to have been no fuss over the awarding of grades for Pre-U exams, the ones preferred to A-levels in most of our private schools! Rather than subsume Pre-U results in their A-level ones, shouldn't all private schools, and the relatively few state schools which use them, be forced to separate the two, so that a clearer picture of how the examination system is being abused emerges? Pre-U examinations are being phased out over the next few years, but that still means hundreds of university places will be gained by students taking an alternative route. And the government still insists on calling it "a level playing-field"!