Too many pupils taking 'easy' A-levels

Maths and science should count for more with colleges than arts subjects, says top educationist

Anushka Asthana, education correspondent
Sunday August 12, 2007
The Observer

Students taking A-levels in the arts and humanities, including English and history, take the easy route to university, say academics in controversial new research which concludes that maths and science subjects are more difficult.

Just four days before teenagers in England and Wales receive their results, studies showing that students of similar ability gain higher grades year on year in subjects such as English, sociology and history have sparked a huge row.

'This smacks of utter desperation by the maths and science community, or whoever is coming out with this poppycock,' said Ian McNeilly, director of the National Association for the Teaching of English. 'Just because there is a low failure rate does not mean an exam is easier. If they want to fight for their subjects, then I admire that, but do not start knocking long-established subjects.'

Science graduates, added McNeilly, already had an advantage in terms of what they earned in the workplace and did not need any more.

Research due to be published soon has found that the A-level failure rate in English has been consistently low since 2001, with just 4 per cent of students failing last year. But 16.7 per cent of students failed in maths, 15.8 per cent in physics and 18.1 per cent in biology. Out of 31 A-level subjects, the sciences have been in the top 10 for failure rates for six years.

'It is hardly surprising, then, that many students are attracted to these "soft option" subjects,' the report concluded, before recommending that 'harder' subjects such as maths be given more credit in 'performance tables and the Ucas tariff' - a points system used by universities that award each subject with the same score.

'Students considering what to do in life are reluctant to do subjects where they think they may fail,' said Roger Porkess, author of the report and chief executive of the charity Maths in Education and Industry. He argued that pupils wanting to go to university could choose 'easier' subjects to maximise their points and chance of winning a place. Giving students who succeed in maths and science extra points, he argued, would encourage more to take the subjects.

Porkess is not alone. Research by the Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre at Durham University found that some subjects were far harder. Pupils with an average B grade at GCSE, it concluded, were likely to get higher marks in English literature or sociology A-level than in French, chemistry or maths. Film studies came out as the 'easiest' subject.

'A-level science, maths and languages seem to be harder,' said Dr Robert Coe, who carried out the study. 'In the context of Ucas tariffs and league tables, where exams are treated as equivalent, I do not think the situation is tenable.' He said it would be too hard to make different subjects equally taxing, so also advocated changing the value given to them in terms of university entry and league tables.

Coe pointed out that, in Australia, pupils tackling the hardest subjects have their scores scaled up, so there was no disincentive. Changing the system, argued Coe, was 'complicated but not impossible, statistically or politically' given that it had been done in other countries. He is now carrying out a much larger study for Score, a partnership that includes the Royal Society, Institute of Physics, and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

The shortage of students choosing maths and science at A-level has reached crisis proportions in the UK. In the early 1980s, more than 100,000 pupils took A-level maths; now it is almost half as many. While further maths is bucking the trend, science subjects have suffered, causing alarm for industry leaders.

'Anecdotally, we hear that physics, maths and other sciences are "harder",' said Professor Peter Main, director of education and science at the Institute of Physics. If Coe's study showed that was the case, he said, science bodies would put pressure on the government.

Main said he was concerned that many universities did not ask for specific subjects, but simply a minimum number of Ucas points, resulting in students avoiding maths and science.

Already, many universities, including the Russell Group of top universities, do not make offers based purely on the tariff system. Some have gone further. Cambridge and the LSE have published lists of subjects of which students should avoid doing more than one.