A letter to the Editor of the Daily Telegraph which was published on 16th June 1993.

Government policy to expand numbers in higher education from about one in seven in 1982 to one in three by 2000, seems to be driven more by sensitivity to international league tables, than by a rational design for either the needs of our economy, or the real needs of our young people (letter, June 10th).

The policy, now implemented, of allowing every polytechnic and some other colleges to call themselves universities, with the all-important right to validate and award their own degrees, flies in the face of the government’s own professed concerns about quality and standards. We now have a situation in which the A-level entry standards to the all important bench mark science and engineering degree courses in the expanded university sector, range from around 6 points (a D and E at A-level) to 22 and above for the top ten or so universities.

Even without the expansion in numbers, there has to be grave concern about the reduction in standards achieved at A-level over the last five years by those who undoubtedly can potentially cope with the demands of an honours degree course. Thus the Joint Matriculation board reported that “the 1988 Applied Mathematics paper was easier than 1987’s”, “1989’s was about the same as 1988’s”, but registered an exceptional drop from 53 to 46 in the mean mark. The vital but difficult subject of calculus was further reduced in 1989. Nonetheless the qualifying marks for each grade in the pure and applied mathematics papers in 1989 were lowered by comparison with 1988 and the number of A-grades increased from 17 to 20 per cent of the candidates.

In essence the work of the schools is being passed by the teachers into the universities. In the short-term the only way of meeting international degree standards is for the universities to lay on, as is now happening, a series of remedial courses in mathematics, the sciences, and English or, as at Oxbridge and elsewhere, to extend degree courses to four years with all the cost implications. However, we should lay out a plan now to restore, over a five-year period, A-level standards to their pre 1987 (i.e. pre GCSE) level by introducing an O-level type option to the GCSE for those at 13 or 14 who display genuine aptitude for it.

A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 17th September 1990.

Mr MacGregor’s repeated declarations that A-level standards will not be compromised (report, Sept. 11th) have an understandable air of desperation.

Here are some facts about recent A-level standards from the Joint Matriculation Board which has generally been regarded as maintaining standards better than most.

In the opinion of the examiners, the 1988 applied mathematics paper was easier than 1987’s; 1989’s was about the same as 1988’s, but registered a drop from 53 to 46 in mean mark.  In chemistry, 1989’s paper “was easier than previously as a result of a deliberate attempt to set ‘can-do’ examinations”.  In pure mathematics in 1989 “greater emphasis was put on . . . practical applications” to disguise generally simpler questions by comparison with 1988’s paper, which was in turn generally simpler than 1987’s.  The vital but difficult subject of calculus was further reduced in 1989.  Nonetheless, the qualifying marks for each grade in the combined maths papers were lowered by comparison with 1988 and the number of A grades increased from 17-20 per cent of candidates.

Who in Mr MacGregor’s department is instructing the examining boards to lower the standards in this way?  Who in his department has given the Schools Examination and Assessment Council the right to try to force into A-level syllabuses matters which have nothing whatever to do with the subjects, but represent the obsessions of the feminist and race lobbies?

Mrs Thatcher is presiding over an educational catastrophe: the very people who should have been removed from the system at the time of the Education Reform Bill have been given carte blanche to wreck it.

A paper is now circulating, proposing that honours degrees should be awarded in the sciences for work to the current second year level, because of the precipitate fall in university real entry standards, a proposal which if acted on would devalue all British degrees, past and future.

Only direct instruction to the examining boards to restore standards, the abolition of the SEAC, major changes in the Inspectorate, the removal of the “whole curriculum” ideologues from the National Curriculum Council and commencing A-level work at 15 rather than 16, will overcome this crisis.