The Daily Telegraph - 16.08.2019

4 ***^ Friday 16 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph

Leading universities take axe to entry grades

Reports by Camilla Turner
EDUCATION EDITOR

MORE students than ever are going
straight into clearing as Russell Group
universities drastically drop their entry
requirements to attract extra students.
This year, 12,410 students decided to
wait until after their A-level results be-

fore looking for a university place, the

highest number on record.

The figures, published by Ucas, the

university admissions service, show a

growing number of 18-year-olds now

favour applying to universities once

they have received their grades.

While the entry requirements for

each course are advertised online,

during the clearing process universi-

ties are usually prepared to accept stu-

dents with grades below their official

offer.

A Daily Telegraph survey found that

places at the country’s leading univer-

sities were available through clearing

with entry requirements heavily re-

duced. Students hoping to study his-

tory at Warwick ordinarily need to

achieve AAA, according to the univer-

sity’s website, but there are places go-

ing for as low as BBB in clearing.

At Exeter, students can gain places

during clearing for a history degree

with BCC, whereas normally they spec-

ify the entry requirement as either

AAB or ABB.

Of the 24 Russell Group universities,

18 had one or more places still available

through clearing last night.

The lifting of student number con-

trols in England in 2015 gave universi-

ties free rein to recruit as many

undergraduates as they see fit.

But the move has led to accusations

that they now act like businesses, seek-

ing to maximise their revenue by re-

cruiting as many students as possible.

This week Jo Johnson, the higher

education minister, told universities

not to use A-level results day as “an oc-

casion to simply get more students

through the door” as he warned of the

rise of unconditional offers.

A quarter of students now receive at

least one unconditional offer, the latest

figures show, despite Government

pressure on universities to slow down

the practice. The proportion of school

leavers who were handed at least one

university place regardless of their

A-level results reached a record high

this year, an analysis last month by the

admissions service Ucas shows.

Yesterday the university watchdog

chief said she is poised to intervene

over unconditional offers.

Nicola Dandridge, chief executive of

the Office for Students (OfS), promised

“we can and we will” use regulatory

powers to crack down on the worst of-

fenders.

She said they would act where they

find evidence of “improper use” of un-

conditional offers. Appearing on BBC

Radio 4’s Today programme, Ms Dan-

dridge said: “There may be circum-

stances in which they are appropriate.

But we are concerned at the significant

increase in unconditional offers.

“We know that students who are of-

fered and accept unconditional offers

may drop a couple of grades in their A-

levels because they do take their foot

off the pedal.

The OfS published a report in Janu-

ary which found that applicants who

accept an unconditional offer are more

likely to miss their predicted A-level

grades by two or more grades.

Number of top

A grades falls to

lowest level in

over a decade

TOP grades have plunged by the great-
est amount since records began, with
the proportion of As and As falling to
its lowest in more than a decade.
The number of A and A grades
dropped by 0.9 percentage points,
which is the largest fall since the Joint
Council for Qualification’s data began
in 2000.
This year, 25.5 per cent of A-level
grades were A or A, which is the low-
est since 2007, figures show.
More than 300,000 A-level students
from across most of the country re-
ceived their results yesterday, with the
majority of subjects redesigned to ex-
clude coursework and modules.
The reforms, initiated by Michael
Gove when he was education secre-
tary, followed years of grade inflation,
with growing numbers of students
achieving top grades. Universities
complained that thousands of students
with A or A grades would make it im-
possible for them to distinguish the
very best candidates. The reforms also
sought to address concerns that many
students were insufficiently prepared
for higher education.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson con-
gratulated students on their results, as
he pledged to boost education funding
as well as give schools “the powers
they need to deal with bad behaviour
and bullying”.
Geoff Barton, general secretary of
the Association of School and College
Leaders, said the drop in top grades
was partly down to more students tak-
ing A-levels, and also because of the
subjects they are now studying.
“There has been a heavy emphasis
on Stem [science, technology, engi-
neering and maths] subjects and more
young people have been encouraged to
do them,” Mr Barton said.
The overall number of entries for
science subjects rose by 12,000 this
year, and now make up a fifth (20.9 per
cent) of all A-levels.
Girls have taken the lead for top
grades, with 25.5 per cent handed at
least an A, compared with 25.4 per cent
of boys. But on A* grades alone, boys
performed better, with 8.2 per cent
getting the highest result, compared
with 7.5 per cent of girls’ entries.
Entries for English language plum-
meted by 21.8 per cent to 14,114, amid
calls for ministers to open an inquiry
into the decline.

Girls outnumber boys taking science subjects for the first time

MORE girls than boys are taking sci-

ence A-levels for the first time, national

figures show.

This year, female students taking bi-

ology, chemistry and physics have out-

stripped their male peers, with girls

making up 50.3 per cent of entries.

There were 84,111 female entries for

science subjects compared to 83,

male entries. It comes during a major

drive to encourage girls to take science,

technology, engineering and maths,

the so-called Stem subjects.

Jill Duffy, chief executive at the exam

board OCR, said efforts had been made

to make the reformed science A-levels

“more engaging” for all pupils, espe-

cially girls.

She said courses were now promot-

ing “positive female role models”, such

as Rosalind Franklin, the scientist

whose work was central to understand-

ing the molecular structure of DNA.

Courses are now making figures like

that more visible, Ms Duffy said, add-

ing: “Often women are seen to be hid-

den in science, and actually there are a

lot of examples where they did the

work but didn’t get the credit for it.”

Chemistry has seen the biggest rise

for girls since 2001, with the number of

female students taking the subject in-

creasing by 39.3 per cent in the past 18

years, from 19,266 to 31,757.

This year, girls made up 53.7 per cent

of entries for the subject, making it the

third consecutive year that girls have

overtaken boys.

Biology has always been more popu-

lar with girls than boys, but female en-

tries have risen by 25 per cent since

2001 with 62.9 per cent of entries for

the subject now from girls.

Physics has seen a 23 per cent in-

crease in uptake from girls since 2001,

from 6,773 to 8,799.

It is now the only science that re-

mains male dominated, with just over a

fifth (22.6 per cent) of the entries from

girls this year. The overall number of

entries for science subjects, from both

sexes, rose by 12,000 this year, and

now make up a fifth of all A-levels.

Prof Tom McLeish, chair of the Royal

Society’s education committee, said:

“In a changing world of work, young

people are recognising that the jobs of

the future will require the skills and in-

sights offered by the sciences and

maths.”

Spanish overtakes French as

the language students love

SPANISH has overtaken French as the
most popular A-level language for the
first time, with 8,625 students taking it
this year, compared with 8,355 taking
French.
Meanwhile, entries for Russian and
Chinese have both tumbled by about a
third since last year. In 2018, Chinese
overtook German as the third most
popular language at A-level, with a re-
cord 3,334 students. But this year en-
tries dropped by 31.9 per cent to 2,272.
Russian dropped 35 per cent from
1,160 to 754.
Spanish increased by 4.5 per cent in
the last year, but other major languages
decreased.
Since 2001, French has declined by
just over half (53.4 per cent) and Ger-
man by almost two thirds (64.1 per
cent), while Spanish has increased by

56 per cent to finally top the A-level

language rankings.

“Who would have thought 20 or 30

years ago this was going to happen?”

said Ignacio Peyro, director of Instituto

Cervantes, the official Spanish lan-

guage and cultural centre. “There’s a

growing perception that the Spanish-

speaking world is becoming more im-

portant in terms of demography,

economy, trade, culture and so on.”

Investigation could change

last year’s maths marks

THE exams watchdog is to investigate

the grade boundaries for last summer’s

maths A-level, after concerns that they

may have been set too high.

Ofqual’s inquiry means that students

who took the A-level in 2018 could po-

tentially see their results changed.

Grades for the reformed A-level were

awarded for the first time last year, but

fewer than 2,000 pupils sat the exams.

These are likely to have been bright

students who completed the course in

just a year, rather than the usual two.

This year, there were 91,895 entries for

the subject.

Ofqual said yesterday that it had

“identified significant shifts in exam

boards’ grade boundaries in reformed

A-level maths between 2018 and 2019”,

adding, “while some fluctuation in

boundaries is not uncommon, we con-

sidered these particular changes to be

more unusual”.

It said the grades awarded this year

were “sound”, and that the much larger

numbers receiving awards “means we

can be confident in the statistical pre-

dictions used to guide the awards”.

But the watchdog added: “In con-

trast, fewer than 2,000 students took

the qualification in 2018, mainly very

able 17-year-olds, many of whom went

on to take further maths in 2019.”

Ofqual asked the exam boards to look

again at last year’s awards before pub-

lishing this year’s results, but none of

the boards decided to make changes.

The watchdog will now investigate

the full range of evidence from both

years and will publish its findings as

well as any action each exam board

should take in response.

Gender-neutral option

selected by 150 teenagers

SOME 150 A-level entries were classi-

fied as “gender neutral” this year, after

two of the country’s leading exam

boards allowed students to opt out of

“boy” and “girl” classifications.

This is the first time that Edexcel and

OCR have revealed the number of ex-

ams sat by non-binary candidates since

they brought in the changes.

Last year, Edexcel, which is owned

by Pearson, said that teenagers who do

not identify with either gender are able

to request that male and female flags

are removed from their system.

Edexcel has also axed gender catego-

ries completely from the documents

that students receive on results day.

“We have removed the gender flag

altogether from the documents stu-

dents receive from us, and we are giv-

ing students the option of removing

the male/female flag on our qualifica-

tions systems by requesting this

through their school or college,” a Pear-

son spokesman said.

Compiling information about stu-

dents’ gender enables exam boards to

examine trends in results. However,

the Joint Council for Qualifications said

that the introduction of a gender neu-

tral option would not affect national

trends since numbers would be too low

to have an impact.

Record numbers head

directly into clearing as

Russell Group institutions

try to attract extra students

Making the grade Eleanor Bracier, left, and Charlotte Hilton, both 18, congratulate each other after receiving their A-level results at Peter Symonds College in

Winchester. They were among about 300,000 students who have received examination results since 6am yesterday – online or by sealed envelopes at school.

ANDREW MATTHEWS / PA WIRE

8,

The number of students taking Spanish at

A-level this year. Just 8,355 were entered

for French A-level

‘We are giving the option of

removing the male/female

flag ... by [asking] through

their school or college’

A-level results

РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS