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| | Extract from 'the site.org' on taking A-Level retakes
Taking Retakes
Having to retake your exams doesn't necessarily mean the end of the world. For 19-year-old Charlotte Martin, it opened up the opportunity to travel to Thailand and volunteer in Equador.
Getting my results
I was absolutely terrified of opening my A-level results. My entire school career seemed to build up to this one moment. I had never for one minute thought I wouldn't go to university - that was what everything was leading towards for me. I had considered the fact that I may not get the grades I needed for my first choice uni, however it was never more than a passing thought, if I am honest.
My plan before results was to study for a degree in Law and I needed to get my predicted grades - AAB - to do so. Before I opened my results I felt physically sick and really just wanted to know one way or another. I knew I couldn't put it off any longer.
When I opened my results I had mixed emotions of extreme happiness and extreme disappointment. I had got AAC, so had missed my place by just one grade. I hoped that maybe my first choice university would accept me, however the course was already heavily oversubscribed so there were no available spaces. I was devastated. I didn't contemplate any other option until the next day when the reality of my results hit home.
What next?
A gap year had never really crossed my mind, although the desire to travel has always been there, it was just not something I had considered straight after my A-levels. Uni was always going to come before travel for me.
Within 48 hours of my results and after many tears and a lot of thinking, I decided that I would retake the subject I had got a C in. I really didn't want to go to my second choice university as I had worked too hard and too long to settle for it. I had set my heart and mind on the best and that was what I was determined to achieve.
The logistics of this took a few more days to sort out, as I had to ask my old school if I could go back and retake. I didn't want to spend the whole year retaking - I wanted to have time to travel too - so I decided to retake my exams in January, leaving the rest of the year to travel and work.
The planning stage
I spent September to December back at school in preparation for my resits. I had one hour a day, five days a week and then had additional lessons on top. I was also working a few hours a week to save money for the travels I had planned after my resits. This wasn't an easy time, especially for the first few weeks as all my friends were off to university, whilst I was in lessons.
I planned to go travelling around March as this would give me time to work and save money before leaving. I decided to go to Ecuador for two months to volunteer at a centre for street children and then my plans were left open. In the end I decided to come home and work for two months before going out to Thailand for a further month.
The right move
The most significant moment of the past year was finding out that I finally got my place at my first choice university. I remember sitting in an internet cafe in Quito when I received the email - I was so happy but there was nobody there I knew to hug. I just sat there smiling and laughing like a complete idiot, but I didn't care because I had finally achieved what I had been working for most of my school life.
Other than that, I think the moment I finally realised I had done the right thing by travelling was when I arrived at a beach in Ecuador. It was the first time I had seen the Pacific Ocean, and all I could think was 'I could have missed this?' It was the moment I realised that everything must happen for a reason.
My advice to others
The advice I would give others waiting for their A-level results is don't panic! If you find yourself in the same position as me then think it through thoroughly before you make a decision. I found that some universities wouldn't even look at people who had A-level retakes, but it is a risk I decided to take.
Travelling is an amazing experience and I can't believe I didn't decide to do it in the first place. Whatever you do, do what's right for you - there is nothing worse than going somewhere because you feel you have to or because there is no other solution. Trust me - there is always a solution! |
| | Times Online: Imperial College ditches A levels and sets its own entrance exam
One of Britain's leading universities is to introduce an entrance exam for all students applying to study there from 2010 because it believes that A levels no longer provide it with a viable way to select the best students.
Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial College, London, suggested that grade inflation at A level meant that so many students now got straight As that it had become almost “worthless” as a way of discriminating between the talented and the well drilled.
Last year one in four A-level marks was a grade A and 10 per cent of A-level students achieved at least three As.
“We can't rely on A levels any more. Everybody who applies has got three or four As. They [A levels] are not very useful. The International Baccalaureate is useful but again this is just a benchmark,” Sir Richard said.
He added: “We are doing this not because we don't believe in A levels, but we can't use the A level any more as a discriminator factor.” The move will make Imperial, which specialises in science and engineering and ranks third in the UK after Oxford and Cambridge in The Times Good University Guide, the first university to introduce a university-wide entrance exam since Oxford scrapped its own version in 1995.
Some universities, including Imperial, use entrance tests to select students for medical schools and both Oxford and Cambridge use specific subject-based entrance tests for certain degree courses. But there is no other institution in the UK offering a university-wide test.
Sir Richard said that the test would be piloted this summer for use in selecting students for entry in 2010 to Imperial, which has 12,000 full-time students. Apart from candidates for medical degrees, who must sit an entrance test called the BMAT, all Imperial applicants will sit the same exam regardless of which subject they intend to study.
The tests would seek to examine students for their innate ability and problem solving skills rather than subject knowledge. “We are going to have entrance exams that will test ability. We are looking for students who really will benefit from an IC education. The examination will look for IQ, intelligence, creativity and innovation and will not be too dependent on rote learning,” Sir Richard said.
But he added that students would not be able simply to stop doing A_levels, as the university would still require evidence that they had studied their chosen subjects in depth.
Sir Richard said that Imperial had been in talks with other universities about the entrance test and suggested that eventually it may be introduced nationally.
He also told the Independent Schools' Council annual conference in London that many students in state schools were short-changed by the state education system, which educated 93 per cent of pupils. He suggested that the Government should offer scholarships to enable the brightest pupils to attend fee-paying schools.
“We have got to do something radical if we are to save the children in our schools who are just not getting the education they deserve. We have in this country one of the best secondary educations in the world, but only a few percentage of people benefit from it,” he said.
Imperial's new exam is bound to increase pressure for the introduction into Britain of American-style scholastic aptitude tests (SATs) as the key qualification for university entrance. |
| | A-Level Article extract from The Independent
A-LEVEL RESULTS are out, greeted by the usual shouts of exultation and tears of dismay. Those whose results have turned out fine will be beaming to themselves in the bosom of their families and receiving advice not to gloat in front of less fortunate peers, while parents and older siblings cast their minds back to their own exam results, and give thanks that it is no longer them under the lens.
Yet every year the same questions are asked: are A-levels less valuable than they were? Has their currency been diminished somehow by the large number of people who take them? Is it easier to get an A in a given subject now than it was 10 years ago?
It is impossible to know the truth - education is one of those subjects that everyone has an opinion on, because we've all had first-hand experience. Even educational experts clash over interpretation.
But the question should be: does it matter? All this breast- beating about the same corny old questions takes place largely because the subject is picked up like an old football, and kicked around each year when there is little else going on in the news.
The A-level system, as it stands, is useful for measuring students in relation to each other for the purposes of university intake. This is the main reason for its existence. But, by definition, the point of an education is not purely to pass exams. School and university are also there to equip you for life in the broadest possible terms: to teach you how to learn, tell you about the world, provide a moral framework, afford the opportunity of empathy for those with whom you apparently have nothing in common (other people) and, heavens!, even allow you to start seeking something called "the truth". Esoteric, but maybe those ancient Greeks had a point that still stands after all these centuries.
Exam results are important, of course. We all know this instinctively, because at some point we are all judged by them. But they are a narrow way of gauging a person's ability and certainly not the only, or best, way of doing it. (Though if five subjects instead of three, as in Scottish Highers, were the national norm, this would be less true.) Anyone whose results were disappointing should take heart from the knowledge that many captains of industry, politicians, and even journalists, got rotten A- level results. The key thing - whether you are disappointed or wildly successful - is to see them largely as an indication of ability to pass exams, and not a judgement passed down on your personal worth - certainly not a prophesy about how the rest of your life will turn out. Nothing is set in stone; there is no script.
But why are so many people so preoccupied by "whither A-levels?"? Sure, more good grades are given out now just because education has been vastly expanded and more people take the exams. Things change. And OK, there does seem to be a generation of people, educated during the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties, whose spelling and grammar is not quite up to old grammar- school standards. But these things go in cycles. It is often forgotten that the previous expansion of university education after the Second World War also uncovered notable problems in this area.
You can guarantee, though, that if the boot were on the other foot, and a group of experts agreed that A-levels were harder now than in the past, a vocal few would first refuse to believe it, then come up with an explanation that justified the need to raise standards in order to protect the worth of their own qualifications.
The yearly discussion of A-levels, as "benchmarks" and "gold standards", degenerates into an ill-tempered display of nostalgia for barely-remembered youth. Why not devote that energy to rethinking the structure of the teaching profession, or figuring out how to woo middle class kids and their families back to the state sector instead - in fact, do something creative? |
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