Education quandary

HILARY'S ADVICE

A lot of parents and teachers were asked what this parent should do, and the consensus seemed to be: search me, we're in uncharted waters now. All the old adages about hard work bringing results, and getting back what you put in, have suddenly come to seem as naive and out-dated as believing in the divine right of kings, or expecting that apostrophes will be used in the right place.

So, what does the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) – original source of this A-level "accident waiting to happen" – suggest? And what does it have to say about how widely the ripples are spreading? These questions were put to it, although more, it must be said, in hope than expectation, given the careless way it so often deals with queries for information. A U- grade reply was what was expected (uninterested, unhelpful, unjargon-free...) but that proved to be naively optimistic. The reply was, in fact, an N grade. For non-existent. So there you have it. The DfES neither knows nor cares how parents should encourage their children out of the mess it has got them into, or just how many students are now getting bogged down in this mire. So, schools and parents are on their own in coping with the fall-out.

"There's a very real sense of confusion and doubt," says Andrew Fisher, deputy head of Wrekin College, a Shropshire independent school, who saw six out of seven of his students awarded U grades in their final English module, even though he'd never had a student get a U grade before in his entire career.

Teachers who used to feel that they knew exactly what they were doing have been left uncertain of their judgement, he says, and when students who are taking their A-levels this year say that they are worried that all their hard work won't count for anything, "all we can do is tell them that we hope that it will all be cleared up by next year".

What a wicked mess. In the old days, it might have been possible to encourage turned-off students to work hard for the sheer pleasure of challenging themselves and seeing what they are capable of. But how naive that sounds now, when these students know that at the end of the day there is nothing even halfway reliable for them to measure their capabilities against.

READERS' ADVICE

Point out to her that not all A-levels were affected, and that for many students, the system still works well. In my school, grades were completely in line with predictions, and we only put one paper forward for a re-mark, and I know a lot of other schools that were also unaffected. Also, point out to her that she is still going to need good grades for whatever she wants to do next, and that the only person she will harm by not working is herself.

June Weisen, Birmingham

There are so many consequences of trying to fit this new A-level concept into old structures. The teaching of the new AS- level, which is half the A2-level, has to be crammed into the first two terms of year 12, as exams are pushed forward to the end of May, or early June, ahead of A2 exams. This means that students and teachers now have to complete four AS-levels in two terms. Students also have to start their A2 subjects at the end of June, often before they know which of their AS subjects they intend to drop – causing motivational problems for both teachers and students. Taking exams in both years has taken time away from students' education, and frequent changes in the syllabus of A-level subjects means that money that should be going into schools is being diverted to support administrators, publishers and textbook authors.

What are we gaining by all these changes? It would be so nice if the purpose of education could once again be for the sake of knowledge and not just statistics.

Renee Barclay,(A-level teacher, Open University associate lecturer, AQA examiner, and parent of a long-suffering A-level student), Norwich

Students will use any excuse. Tell her that in life, things aren't always perfect and she just has to get on and do the best that she can with what she's got.

Vincent McMahon, Wiltshire

Next week's quandary

My eight-year-old son is struggling with his reading, and is not making good progress. I am sure that this is because he spends so much of his time working with the classroom assistant rather than the class teacher, and that if he had more proper help from his teacher he would be doing much better. However, the school says that it is giving him the best help that it can offer. What can I do?