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.