This is what he wrote:

Dear secretary of state,

You hardly need me to tell you how much damage has been done to A-levels over the past few weeks.

However - to coin a phrase - I believe A and AS-levels are certainly still worth the paper they are written on. And I don't just say that because I have a daughter who has just embarked on them.

Keep the AS, abandon the A2, and restore the old A-level

Mike Tomlinson is now working on a quick resolution of the muddle over grading and standards. But is his remit wide enough?

I know there is now a political need for a quick solution and an understandable fear of larger scale change.

But talking to teachers, it seems to me there is one practical way to ease the current problems.

While it probably could not be done by next summer, it could both solve the standards muddle and keep all the real benefits of the AS-level.

Bring back the A-level

In short, the AS-level should be kept as a separate, free-standing qualification but it should not form any part of the full A-level.

In other words, keep the AS, abandon the A2, and restore the old A-level.

The advantage of scrapping the A2 is that - unlike the AS - it is not a qualification in its own right so you will not be devaluing the currency of anyone's qualifications.

By contrast, there are many reasons for keeping the AS-level.

The broader range of study in sixth forms and colleges was way overdue. It was equally important to have a half-way qualification between the GCSE and the full A-level.

Fraught

The educational leap from GCSE to A-level is so great that knowing there is a midway exit can both encourage some to stay in education after 16 while saving others from the terrible waste of spending two years and emerging with nothing.

Where else do we consider testing students at a higher level than the one they are studying at?

The current mess is not to do with the AS itself but entirely the result of the attempt to combine the AS and the A2 to make them equal something quite different, namely the old-style A-level.

This was always fraught with difficulty. The AS-level has to be easier than the full A-level because it is taken after just one year.

But, correspondingly, this meant the A2 had to be harder than the old-style A-level. Otherwise the AS + A2 would not equal the old A-level.

Unprecedented

But this means that at the end of the sixth form we are testing students at a level higher than the overall standard of the qualification they are taking.

Where else do we consider testing students at a higher level than the one they are studying at?

It would be like a modular degree course where students are tested at sub-degree level after their first year but given final exams at post-graduate level in order to balance out the easier test in the first year.

We do not expect undergraduates to do post-graduate level work, so why should we expect A-level students to do work which is "harder" than the A-level?

It seems likely that it was this higher-than-A-level standard expected in the A2 which caused the confusion in schools, with experienced teachers still puzzled by the lower-than-expected grades of their students.

Breadth remains

So, it seems to me, the solution is staring us in the face. We should keep the AS-level but de-couple it from the full A-level.

After all, some schools already take all their AS and A2 papers at the end of the second year

This way the typical students would still do four subjects in the first year of post-16 study. In subjects they know they will pursue to the full A-level they should not bother to sit an AS-level.

This would cut by half, possibly three-quarters, the number of subjects being examined at AS-level.

This would restore some of the "breathing space" quality of the first year of post-16 study which has been lost by the imminence of examinations in every subject just nine months after the start of the sixth from.

How it would work

So, if you are taking maths, physics, economics and English and you know you will drop the latter, then you sit only the AS in English.

You collect your AS (English) and go on to take all the modules of your remaining subjects at the end of the second year, just as you would have done under the old-style A-level.

This is perfectly possible. After all, some schools already take all their AS and A2 papers at the end of the second year of study.

They find it works well. It means taking no more exam papers than under the old-style A-level.

This way you have all the advantages of a new half-way qualification, broader studies and no muddle over grading.

Testing the water

Now, you might argue that this works only if you already know which subject you want to drop. Fair point. But this system could cope with that.

As well as ending the muddle over grading, this change would also eliminate a loophole in the current system

Taking the example above. Let us say the student knows she wants to take the maths and physics to the full A-level but is not quite sure whether to drop the economics or the English.

She would like an indication from her AS result to decide which to abandon.

No problem, she takes AS-levels in both economics and English. Then, after the results, she decides to keep the AS (English) but to pursue economics to A-level.

At the end of the second year she still takes all six modules for economics to gain the full A-level.

In other words, she can not "cash in" the AS in economics for use as part of the full A-level.

Muddle and loophole gone

So, some might say, students have wasted their time taking the AS examination. Well, not really.

First, it gave them a good guide to which subjects to drop, second it acted as a very realistic "mock" exam, and third, should the student fail the A-level economics then she can fall back on the AS as a free-standing qualification.

As well as ending the muddle over grading, this change would also eliminate a loophole in the current system. Some schools are taking both the AS and A2 modules all in one go after two years' study.

This gives them a big advantage over others because they have had an extra year of study before taking the AS modules. In subjects such as maths or foreign languages, you are clearly going to be at a higher level after two years than after one.

Same syllabuses

The advantage of this solution is that all the work that has gone into devising AS-level exams is not wasted.

The A2 would have to be scrapped, though, and the exam boards would have to return to the old-style A-level.

There would not need to be any changes to syllabuses because, as now, the AS would still be based on the first half of the full A-level course.

The A2 is, anyway, really only a figment of a statistician's imagination. It is not so much that the A2 exam paper is tougher than the old A-level but simply that the standards students are expected to reach have been raised.

As I said earlier, I fear this solution will be more radical than the adjustments you had in mind. I understand the need for a rapid restoration of faith in the system.

But this proposal would keep the many good aspects of the Curriculum 2000 reforms (the breadth and the half-way qualification) while giving students a bit more freedom from exam pressure in their first year and ending the mystical and confusing process of combining AS and A2 to make an A-level.

Yours sincerely,

Mike Baker,
BBC education correspondent.