'A' Level

The General Certificate of Education Advanced Level—generally termed the GCE Advanced Level or, more commonly, the A-level—is an academic qualification offered by educational bodies in the United Kingdom and the British Crown dependencies to students completing secondary or pre-university education.

In Scotland specifically, A-levels are offered as an alternative school-leaving qualification. A-levels are also available with varying content and style throughout the Commonwealth and on most Caribbean islands.

A-levels require studying an offered A-level subject over a two-year period and sitting for an examination at the end of each year (AS and A2, respectively), proctored by an official assessment body. Most students study three or four A-level subjects simultaneously during Year 12 and Year 13 (ages 16–18), either in a secondary education institution or in a Sixth Form College, as part of their further education.

A-levels are recognised by many universities as the standard for assessing the suitability of applicants for admission in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, and many such universities base their conditional admissions offers on a student's predicted A-level grades.

Curriculum

The A-level from 1951 to 2000Between 1918 and 1951, the main qualification for school leavers was the Higher School Certificate. This qualification required students to study a range of subjects. By 1953, because it had become apparent that some students were failing the qualification because of weakness in a single area, the decision was taken to develop examinations that assessed students in single subjects. Thus was born the A Level (Advanced Level) examinations, which could be taken on a subject-by-subject basis, according to the strengths and interests of the student.The A Level at first was graded as simply pass or fail (although students were given an indication of their marks, to the nearest 5%) but by 1963 rising numbers of students taking the exam made it clear that there needed to be more differentiation of achievement. Letters were therefore introduced to award specific grades of pass to students. The grades were norm-referenced and awarded as follows:A – top 10%B – next 15%C – next 10%D – next 15%E – next 20%O (Ordinary) Level – next 20%Fail – final 10% Candidates whose marks fell between the 10th and 30th percentiles were awarded an Ordinary Level pass which indicated a performance equivalent to at least a grade C at GCE Ordinary Level.The validity of this system was questioned in the 1980s because, rather than reflecting a standard, it was simply maintaining a specific proportion of candidates at each grade. During the 40-year period from 1955 to 1995, the percentage of students staying on at school had gone from 13% to 72%, so using fixed percentages of a cohort to establish a standard was becoming less viable.In 1987, a new system that fixed specific criteria for grades B and E, and then divided out the other grades according to fixed percentages, was introduced. Rather than awarding an Ordinary Level for the lowest pass, a new "N" (for Nearly passed) was introduced. In 1988, GCSE examinations were also introduced replacing the O levels. Criticisms of A level grading continued, and when Curriculum 2000 was introduced, the decision was made to have specific criteria for each grade, and the 'N' grade was abolished. In 2003, a UK parliamentary enquiry heard that the A level grading at that time was neither norm-referenced nor criterion referenced, but rather shared elements of the two and so should be thought of as 'a soft criterion referencing.'The evolution of A level from a two-year linear course with an exam at the end, to a modular course took place gradually between the late 80s and 2000. By the year 2000 there was a strong educational reason to standardise the exam and offer greater breadth to students through modules and there was also a pragmatic case based on the inefficiency of linear courses where up to 30% of students were failing to complete or pass