The new A level and GCSE exams

• They are linear, ie the whole content is examined at the end of the course. The ‘old’ A levels were modular and students usually took exams in a couple of AS level modules half-way through the A-level course. New AS results won’t count towards the A-level grade at all (modular AS results counted for 50%).
• They are designed to pose the same general standard of difficulty as the ‘modular’ A levels, though the review of content has made some subjects tougher.
• Exams make greater use of ‘synoptic’ questions, and there is a greater variety of question types (eg multiple choice).
• Coursework has been reduced. For example, in English, History and Computer Science, the amount of coursework possible has been reduced from 40% to 20%.
• The assessment of practical work in Science does not not contribute to the final A-level mark but is reported separately in a certificate of endorsement.
• A student wishing to retake A level must resit the entire theory exam in June (January retakes ceased in 2013), though it is possible to carry forward internally assessed marks.
• It is still possible to complete an A-level course in one year, so long as all the assessments are completed at the end.
• Linear A levels are graded with the same A* to E pass marks as previously.
• OFQUAL say that, while new exams generally cause a dip in students’ ‘raw’ marks, exam boards’ grade awarding processes should ensure that the percentage of students getting each grade will not change significantly with linear A levels, subject to some technical considerations. In practice this involves adjusting downwards the number of ‘raw’ marks required to get each grade.
• Change was introduced in phases as described later in this article.

Government figures on 2018 exam entries show AS entries fell by 60% between 2017 and 2018 exam sessions, following another large drop the year before. Anecdotal evidence from independent schools suggests that many are abandoning AS as an end-of-lower-sixth qualification. Many state schools continue to use AS as a useful target for students (when A level was linear many years ago, students often didn’t work as hard as they needed to in lower sixth), but other schools have scrapped it: entering for public exams costs money, and takes time away from class. For sixth forms under severe budget pressures, especially in the state FE sector, the cost of offering ‘extra’ AS options for relatively limited benefit has resulted in significant cuts in provision. It is likely to be several years before the uptake of ‘new’ AS levels stabilises, and, although uptake in some subjects such as Maths remains healthy, in others the AS examination may not survive.

Universities don’t want to penalise or discourage students whose sixth-form courses depend upon what their school has decided to offer, so while competitive university courses emphasise the need for high grades, they don’t require more than 3 A levels and none require AS exams. Although Cambridge University issued a letter to schools supporting the value of AS, stating that the university would like to see AS results because it regards them as a better predictor of success at university than GCSE, it also emphasises that students won’t be penalised if their school doesn’t enable AS exams.

The availability of other ‘top end’ challenges which bright sixth-formers can take on to show their exceptional academic promise,   such as Extended Project Qualification (EPQ) make it less likely that colleges will push all their able students to take a fourth subject at AS

The old ‘modular’ AS was worth 50% of an A level in the UCAS tariff scheme for university entrance (though you can’t count an AS result if you also have the full A level in that subject). The new AS also counts, but only for 40% of an A level. University offers may be in terms of specific A-level grades (for which extra AS subjects don’t help) or total points count (in which an extra AS can be included). For more details visit the UCAS pages dealing with the points tariffs.

• The old A* to E grading system has been replaced. There is now a new 1-9 grading scale for GCSE exam results: 9 is top mark, aimed at around half of the students who used get an ‘A*’, and broadly the same proportion of students will achieve a grade 4 and above as currently achieve a grade C and above. Does this mean that the new grade 4 will be equivalent to the current ‘C’ grade? As OFQUAL explain, it’s not that simple! The word on the street is that, in Maths at least, it is harder to get a 4 than it is to get a C at the moment. But OFQUAL say that the proportion achieving a 4 or better is the more or less the same as in 2016. The first set of exam results in August 2017 saw some minor fluctuations but in general were in line with previous years
• In some subjects a percentage of the marks is allocated to accurate spelling, punctuation and grammar (SPaG). 20% in Eng lang, 5% in Eng Lit
• New GCSEs are intended to have more demanding content. Maths is reckoned to require more teaching time than before
• Exams are the preferred method of assessment – except where they cannot provide valid assessment of the skills required. So, for example, the new GCSE Maths has no coursework at all. Non-exam assessment is determined on a subject-by-subject basis
• ‘Tiering’ (ie different exam papers aimed at higher / lower achievers) has been scrapped in some subjects
• A November GCSE exam remains available in English and Maths only.
• Problems with the new GCSE exams, written a few weeks before GCSE results day in 2017, summarises the plus and minus points of the new GCSEs.

• Sept 2015: Start teaching new A levels and new AS in Phase 1 subjects
• June 2016: New AS exams in Phase 1 subjects. Last ‘first-time-candidate sitting for modular A level exams in Phase 1 subjects.
• Sept 2016: Start teaching new A levels and new AS in all Phase 2 subjects except Maths
  
• June 2017: First new A level exams in Phase 1 subjects. First new AS level exams in Phase 2 subjects. Last first-time-candidate sitting for modular A level exams in Phase 2 subjects.  Last retake opportunity for old modular exams in Phase 1 subjects
  
• Sept 2017: Start teaching new A levels and new AS in Maths and in Other subjects
• June 2018: First new A-level exams in Phase 2 subjects. First new AS level exams in Maths and Other subjects. OFQUAL say that this will be the last first-time-candidate sitting for modular A level exams in Other subjects. Last retake opportunity for old modular exams in Phase 2 subjects
• September 2018: start teaching in the last of the reformed specifications (Minority Languages)
• June 2019: First new A level exams in Maths and Other subjects. Last retake opportunity for old modular exams in Other subjects
• June 2020: First new A level exams in Minority Languages.

What were A and AS level Phase 1 subjects?

What were A and AS level Phase 2 subjects?

What about A and AS level Other subjects?

These are all the A level and AS subjects which are not named in Phase 1 or 2, including A level Maths and A level Further Maths

• All Other subjects were reviewed by the exam board(s) offering them and reformed as necessary before OFQUAL agreed to ‘ratify’ them – ie allow those subjects to continue. The list of subjects to be discontinued  shows that in some cases exam boards decided not to keep a subject going, while other subjects failed OQUAL’s ratification process.
• The same line of thinking applies to minority subjects at AS level and GCSE.
• Visit the OFQUAL site for a complete list of A and AS subjects still available

What are AS and A level Minority Languages?

The very final set of subjects started teaching in September 2018. They are: Biblical Hebrew, Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati, Greek, Modern Hebrew, Japanese, Panjabi, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Turkish, and Urdu

In September 2015 teaching began in new syllabuses in just 3 subjects: Maths, English Language and English Lit. The first exams in these subjects took place in summer 2017.

In September 2016 teaching began in a wide range of new GCSEs – virtually all of the remaining ‘mainstream’ GCSE subjects (see OFQUAL summary for a complete list)

In September 2017 teaching began in almost all the rest of the approved new GCSEs (see OFQUAL summary for a complete list)

In September 2018 teaching began in the final set of approved GCSEs: Biblical Hebrew, Gujarati, Persian, Portuguese, and Turkish

OFQUAL and the exam boards go to a lot of trouble to ensure ‘grade stability’ – a commitment that students of the same ability will get the same grades year after year. As described in the ‘Guide to AS and A level results for England 2018’, exam boards operate on the principle of ‘comparable outcomes’: that if the ability of the cohort of students is similar to previous years, they would expect results (outcomes) to be similar.
This means that, in general, students who would have achieved a grade A in one year would achieve a grade A in another year. How comparable outcomes are brought about relies on a mixture of statistical analysis and judgement calls based on hard-to-quantify concepts such as ‘difficulty’.

Grade stability in practice involves adjustments to the ‘grade boundaries’ – the cut off marks for each grade. That in turn relies on the assumption that students in any year are pretty similar (on average) to ones in past years. That assumption is reasonable unless, as is currently happening at AS, the number and or the nature of students taking an exam changes rapidly.

When the exam itself changes ‘grade stability’ judgements are put under more strain, especially if the only way to ensure that there are no major changes in the percentage getting each grade is to make significant shifts in grade boundaries. Raw marks are adjusted (‘scaled’) to give the final marks to which grade boundaries are applied, and the scaling process changed with the shift from modular to linear A levels, making it hard to do objective comparisons.

However the adjustments were made, exam boards, have been broadly successful in ensuring that the percentage of candidates getting each grade has not changed much over the past five years. The Student Performance Analysis website shows the number of students taking each A-level subject and the percentage gaining each grade for 2018 and for every year back to 1993. Although most syllabuses have changed several times during that period the figures show reasonable year-on-year stability. More detailed results tables for 2018 are available on the JCQ website. For further information on grade boundaries see, for example, the AQA archive .

Whenever exams change some candidates benefit while others do less well – that’s just a fact of life – and ‘grade stability’ measures are aimed at ensuring that the ‘average’ result is the same year on year (and subject by subject), rather than trying to ensure that each individual is unaffected.

To quote OFQUAL “When qualifications change we would expect individual school results to be more variable, because the changes will have different impacts in different schools and in different subjects. It is not possible to predict at this stage how the national picture will look: these changes do not pull results universally in one direction or another, but together they are likely to affect the national picture to some extent.”

As with any change, there will be winners and losers, not just individuals but whole schools. As ever, those who gain keep quiet, while those who lose (or think they’ve lost) complain loudly.

Our page on problems with the new GCSE exams goes into more detail.

Which AS subjects to offer? The default option is to offer AS in all A level subjects and to co-teach AS and first year A level. However, the new AS is only ‘worth’ 40% of the A level, so this approach may leave 60% worth of work to be covered in the final year. But it costs more to run AS classes separately from A level. As the entry statistics referred to earlier show, many schools are dropping AS.

Whether to make all A-level-bound students take AS in lower sixth? To do so has some benefits:

• It  is easier to get students to take a public exam like AS seriously than it is to make them work as hard for an internal ‘mock’ exam
• A public exam is likely to be more ‘valid’ in terms of question setting and marking
• Teaching a group of students who are all aiming at AS is easier than teaching one in which some will take AS and others won’t.
• Universities may trust grade prediction more if AS results support them

However many independent schools and some ‘top’ state colleges have decided that their sixth formers will not take AS en route to A level. We expect this trend to continue as more and more schools revert to internal exams at the end of lower sixth.

Whether to enable a 4th AS subject? Pressures on costs and teaching time are reducing the number of sixth forms which can provide this option. We anticipate that the number of students taking stand-alone AS exams will continue to decline.

Whether to give more teaching time per subject to the second year? The 40/60 split between AS and final A level implies more teaching per subject in second year. This is not always easy to implement depending on timetable practicalities, funding, non-A level components etc. Colleges need to monitor the effects of their time-allocation decisions very carefully, and be ready to change if events prove that students need more teaching time.

How to squeeze in other components of sixth-form education? Sixth-form programmes have always included ‘enrichment’ and ‘extension’ and pastoral elements which must be given suitable time. The Extended Project Qualification is a relatively new sixth-form enrichment component which attracts UCAS points and the Government’s commitment to ensuring that, by 2020, the majority of sixth-formers take a post 16 maths qualification will add to pressures on the timetable.

How to get students ready for big sit-down exams? Teachers have had to review how they teach, assess and prepare students for an end-of-course exam pattern. The challenge is significantly greater than posed by the old module-based exams, and many younger teachers have not themselves  taken exams based on a whole two years’ worth of learning.

How to predict A-level grades effectively? Teachers have to make grade predictions for university-bound students 6 to 9 months before they sit A levels. That’s always been challenging, and as UCAS’ statistics show, the shortfall between prediction and achievement has grown over the past few years. New exams always make this harder, and even for those sixth-formers who take AS at the end of lower sixth, there will be new uncertainty about their predictive value.

However with exception of a very few minority language subjects, all GCSE and A level exams sat in summer 2019 were linear, and in those subjects no further modular exams will be set. This means that a student who sat a modular exam in 2018 or earlier and who wants to resit will have to switch to a linear exam, and take all of it in one sitting.