TWO MONTHS of anticipation and anxiety have finally ended for Cypriot students who took British A-Level exams, following the official announcement of the results last week.
Schools around the island confirmed yesterday that the grades were very satisfying.
Worldwide, the number of A grades awarded at GCE A-Level rose again this year, with a record number of pupils earning university places. More students overall gained qualifications in maths, science and language subjects, something exam boards hailed as a “positive and encouraging development”.
According to figures for Cyprus last year, a record 77 local pupils scored top marks in Accounting, Fine Art, Modern Greek, Government and Politics, Ancient History, Maths and Pure Maths. In addition, 2007 saw pupils achieving a stunning 40 per cent proportion of As, compared to the British average of 25 per cent.
This year, like the previous year, the grades were more than satisfactory.
The headmaster of the English School, Stuart Haggett, told the Cyprus Mail yesterday that roughly 80 per cent of the school’s grades were As and Bs. “I can only tell you provisionally at this stage,” he explained, “but we should have around 25 to 30 straight A students.”
Good results were also obtained by the Grammar School in Nicosia. “The results for this year were very good, even better than last year’s. We are very pleased with our students’ grades. We had many students with As and also students who scored straight As and secured places at leading UK universities, including Cambridge and Oxford,” said the headmaster, Andreas Afamis.
These encouraging results, though, beg the same thorny question which is raised every August: are the A-Levels getting easier?
According to the official online gateway to Higher Education and Research, HERO, a study conducted by the Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre at Durham University seems to show that they are. The Centre has developed its own test of students’ academic capabilities, known as the Test of Developed Abilities (TDA), which aims to measure the consistency of A-Level results. According to the Centre, each year sees candidates achieving higher grades than similar ability candidates in previous years. As an example, in 1988 a maths student with TDA score of 50 would have received a low C. In 2006, the same TDA score would be equivalent to a high B or a low A.
“I don’t think the difficulty has changed since Curriculum 2000 was introduced,” observed Chris Bailey, headmaster of Foley’s Grammar School in Limassol, where, as in previous years, a significant proportion – this year over 90 per cent – of the grades achieved by pupils were A to C. “It is probably true, though, that people are learning how to play the system a bit better.”
As the proportion of top A-Level grades grows, it is becoming increasingly difficult for universities to differentiate between their most able applicants who may all have almost identical top scores. For this reason, September will see both the reworking of the A-Level specification as well as the introduction of a new A* grade for the best A-Level students and an extended project which aims to stretch even the brightest of pupils. The project will give students vital experience in research, critical thinking and evaluation, but will only constitute an optional component of the A-Levels. Ministers are calling for all schools to offer the project as it will help prepare students for both university and employment.
