In America groundhog day is traditionally held on February the second, in England however we have it today. There’s no Punxsutawney Phil predicting the end of winter of course; we English know full well that the wet weather will never end and are all busy constructing arks in our back gardens. No, the reason that today is Groundhog day is because the A-level results are about to be announced.
For the chronically foreign among us I should perhaps explain that A-levels are the qualifications which basically determine if you go (and where you go) to University. A-level courses are non mandatory, two years long, and can be held either in high schools or specialist colleges. The students are generally 16 when they start and 18 when they finish, although obviously you can choose to undertake one at any age you wish.
Every single year when the A-level scores come out it is announced that the results are better than last year’s. The entire media then becomes awash with claims that the exams are becoming easier and the great British educational system is slumping into the mire. Someone will claim that the overuse coursework is to blame, someone else will rant about the dumbing down of society. The popularity of subjects like media studies and psychology over maths, chemistry and physics will inevitably be lamented, and some spotty eighteen year old will be dragged in front of a microphone to feebly point out that they thought the exams were “well hard, init”.
And they all probably have a point. To be honest I have no idea if the exams are getting easier or if the standard of the teaching is improving so as to make students better equipped to manage them. But what I do know is that I wish they would bloody sort it all out, because I’m getting fed up of it all being re-hashed year after year.
I have it on good authority that TV stations have entire days worth of programming pre-recorded to use when the Queen dies. When St. Diana (queen of our hearts) kicked the bucket we had to kiss goodbye to any decent TV for weeks afterwards, hell the Daily Express still has the wretched woman as its front page every second day. I am beginning to suspect that there’s a similar level of preparedness for A level results day too. After all it’s not easy to predict the news, it must be nice to have a day off and just bung a tape in the machine and press play now and again.
My own A-level results were nothing to write home about, but they were good enough to get me into the third most prestigious academic institution in the world: Sunderland University, so that’s all that matters. Actually the A-level college I attended, Greenhead College, has consistently been at the top of the national league tables and boasts a 99% pass rate. How much that has to do with the quality of their teaching and how much to do with their selective admission process is a matter for debate.
During the first week of college I was enthusiastically informed that the Headmaster had been nationally celebrated for devising a formula that was able to predict the A-Level grades of students. It did this by analysing past results at high school, basically saying that if you did academically well in the past, you are probably going to do academically well in the future. No shit Sherlock.
My high school grades were pretty mediocre, and I was told that I should expect that my A-levels would be around the C mark. Quite what the logic of giving me this information was is beyond me, it hardly inspired me to strive for academic greatness. In fact I blame my eventual lacklustre A-level results to that very moment. It had nothing whatsoever to do with my sporadic attendance, general apathy, and experimentations with alcohol, and anyone who tells you it does is a liar.
But still, at least I can rest easy in the knowledge that my B, C, and two D’s are worth more than all of today’s qualifications put together. After all, according to the newspaper I read this morning, A-level exams are ridiculously easy these days.
