A letter to the Daily Telegraph which was published on 9th June 1988.

Your report (June 7th) that the Government is likely to reject the Higginson Committee’s recommendations to abolish A-levels in favour of another soft option is very welcome news.  Every major change in education of the last 30 years, down to and including the substitution of GCSE for GCE, has had as its principal though undisclosed objective the mitigation of failure.

What is so puzzling in all this is that the Government, with its crusade for competitive achievement, should continue to seek advice from those who are opposed to just about everything it stands for in this regard.  As with the report on national testing, a committee set up to do one thing reports in virtually the opposite sense.

It may however be further asked why the Government does not simply privatise the examining boards – there are enough of them.  Some boards could then continue to offer O-level examinations, for which there is a clear demand, both at home and overseas, incidentally; those boards which wished to develop for some schools a sub A-level system of the Higginson Committee type would then be free to do so.  Private institutions like the Royal Society of Arts have set highly regarded examinations responsive to demand for years; application of the principle to schools’ examinations would be a real extension of consumer choice in education.