Marks Are Better Than Grades
Ministers should order the release of a breakdown of students' A-level results to help universities select the best candidates, a leading exam board said today.
Universities would be able to browse through students' individual essay, coursework and exam marks in an effort to select the most appropriate candidates for their courses.
The call follows mounting worries that universities are being faced with hoards of students with the top A grade A-levels, and are unable to distinguish between them. Last year more than one in five students got an A grade at A-level.
Some universities have begun developing aptitude-based tests to try and tackle the problem for the most oversubscribed courses, which include medicine, veterinary studies and law. These are favoured because they assess aptitude, not acquired knowledge, meaning they offer a relatively level playing field for students from different backgrounds.
The admissions service Ucas have been investigating how marks might contribute to the applications process.
Now the Alliance of Qualifications and Assessment, one of the three big exam boards, has carried out research which shows that students from the independent schools are achieving higher marks than their state school counterparts at the top end of the results spectrum.
A spokesperson said that they would favour using the marking scores rather than introducing a new starred A grade to distinguish at the top.
Mike Cresswell, chief executive of the AQA, told the Independent newspaper: "These [the marks] are already supplied to the students and already supplied to the schools. There is nothing secret about them and nothing to stop them being passed on. But they're not something that higher education has asked for."
However, the spokesperson added that the alliance was unsure whether it would advocate supplying marks to universities from coursework instead of the predicted grades which universities currently go on. It has been suggested that such a system
Universities would be able to browse through students' individual essay, coursework and exam marks in an effort to select the most appropriate candidates for their courses.
The call follows mounting worries that universities are being faced with hoards of students with the top A grade A-levels, and are unable to distinguish between them. Last year more than one in five students got an A grade at A-level.
Some universities have begun developing aptitude-based tests to try and tackle the problem for the most oversubscribed courses, which include medicine, veterinary studies and law. These are favoured because they assess aptitude, not acquired knowledge, meaning they offer a relatively level playing field for students from different backgrounds.
The admissions service Ucas have been investigating how marks might contribute to the applications process.
Now the Alliance of Qualifications and Assessment, one of the three big exam boards, has carried out research which shows that students from the independent schools are achieving higher marks than their state school counterparts at the top end of the results spectrum.
A spokesperson said that they would favour using the marking scores rather than introducing a new starred A grade to distinguish at the top.
Mike Cresswell, chief executive of the AQA, told the Independent newspaper: "These [the marks] are already supplied to the students and already supplied to the schools. There is nothing secret about them and nothing to stop them being passed on. But they're not something that higher education has asked for."
However, the spokesperson added that the alliance was unsure whether it would advocate supplying marks to universities from coursework instead of the predicted grades which universities currently go on. It has been suggested that such a system