A-levels are no longer fit for purpose as they are failing to equip young people with the broad range of skills they’ll need in a rapidly changing workplace.
This is the view of Venki Ramakrishnan, President of the Royal Society, who is set to deliver an address today (February 12, 2019) calling for an independent review into post-16 learning during the next parliament, with a view to transforming school curriculums within the next decade.
It is compulsory in countries including Estonia, Finland, Spain and Taiwan for upper secondary students to tackle a first and second language, maths, science, and one or more further subject. The situation is different in the UK where students chose their own combination of A level options. Typically, students take three A levels but research commissioned by the Royal Society puts the average number of A-levels per student at 2.7, raising concerns about whether young people are leaving school with the broad range of skills needed for the modern workplace.
“If we want our young people to be able to get good jobs and employers to be able to hire the people they need in the future, we need to make sure our schools and colleges are teaching the skills that will be needed. A-levels are not doing that,” Ramakrishnan will tell delegates at the Royal Society Business Forum. “The jobs market has always changed but we are facing a new wave of change driven by technologies such as artificial intelligence. Some jobs will change, some will be lost altogether and there will be many new jobs in industries that don’t even exist yet.”
Highlighting the urgency of the situation, the Royal Society notes that four out of five businesses expect to increase the number of high-skilled roles over the coming years, but two thirds are concerned there will be a lack of sufficiently skilled people to fill them.
They add that from ages 16 to 18, young people’s education should broaden to help develop transferable skills including communication, problem solving, and team work.
But what alternatives to A Levels will maintain academic rigour whilst broadening young people’s horizons and preparing them for work? Could it be the International Baccalaureate, where a final assessment is made in each of six subject groups, namely: language and literature; language acquisition; individuals and societies; sciences; mathematics; the arts. How about 3 A levels plus core maths and an EPQ (Extended Project Qualification, a research project into a topic of the student’s choice that involves an extended essay and presentation at the end of the course); or something based on the French baccalaureate model, where students choose from one of three streams, each with a different specialisation (sciences, economics and social science, and literature).
Alternatively, is the Royal Society being unfair to a qualification that allows young people to start specialising in a subject, and which can help steer their choices beyond sixth form or college?
Let us know by taking part in our Poll and by leaving a comment below. Results of the Poll will be published on February 19, 2019. Comments are moderated and The Engineer’s guidelines for comments can be found here.
A levels should be preparation for studying at university. The English Bachelor’s degree is only three years long, which is too short and means that competitors from other countries (where the Bachelor’s is four years ) are at an advantage. In science and engineering, English uni graduates are mathematically very weak when compared to other countries. Secondary education needs to refocus to make up for this short-coming, because it is, without a doubt, the most harmful.
I have to concur that as a British University student I was woeful at Mathematics by comparison to some of my peers from Asian countries in particular.
That may be the case for mathematics, but those education systems also have a lot of other issues (no least the amount of pressure students can be put under, I’m thinking particularly China and India). I think it would be wrong to compare ourselves to the Asian edudation system and a bad idea to copy them.
I agree completely with Mohammed, as a third worlder that studied a B.Eng (Hons) and moved to the UK for work. I ended up in a Graduate scheme where their were engineering Masters Students from “top” UK Universities. I found that many of my Peers knew some abstract fancy sounding post graduate level things as a result of their master studies. But they seemed to lack the fundamentals especially in Mathematics and Electromagnetism.
Have A-levels ever equipped young people with the skills they’ll need in the workplace?
A levels were invented for those wanting to join one of the ‘guild’ occupations such as Law, Accountancy, Education, Medicine, all of which needed a means of controlling entry to their professions ….. and also those who were very very clever (and also possibly on the spectrum) who Universities really needed in order to demonstrate their ‘excellence’
Now, A levels are just a rung on that ladder up into the ‘middle class’ …
Young people today are hardly in a position to know what they want to do when at Uni, let alone make life determining choices about what to study (and therefore what life steer to take) when at any level prior to Uni. The ‘A’ levels get them into Uni and the Uni (hopefully) gets them into gainful employment in their chosen area of work.
I would argue that many students have their efforts diluted by taking too many subjects in some form or another. Scientists/engineers should specialise in their own core subjects[chemistry, maths, physics, further maths, biology, IT etc] with broadening covered by General Studies, taught in a multi-disciplinary group [ie join the Artists for this] [You may gather I am a ‘Child of the Sixties and this approach has suited me well for a technical career in the polymer industry]. Maths is a struggle for many, and I would argue that too many students enter STEM undergrad courses with poor mathematical ability, fuelled by some lower-grade universities accepting poorly qualified students onto STEM courses to make up their numbers and gain revenue even if the students drop out.
Surely we have lost the concept of Education. It is essential for students to be exposed to and experience everything possible from Fine Art to finite analysis , both inside and outside the classroom. We know that we will , unless we are Civil Servants, change jobs and even career paths at least twice during our working lives . Our experience is what matters, so the broader the curriculum the better.
Like John B, I am a child of the Sixties, but I have worked in nuclear, polymer extrusion, steel wire production, mechanical testing machines and special lubricants, based on a classical education, science ‘A’-levels, OND Technology and B.Tech ( yes the real one!) in Materials Science.
Having been in the ‘Tech College’ environment, we studied a wide range of subjects: computing ( on paper strip) , tech. drawing, foundry, surveying, mech & elec engineering , all of which have stood me in good stead in understanding many parts of industry.
The Secondary Schools system has been ruined by Government in that funding depends on results and hence the budget available to run and supply courses with decent materials.
How can we expect to develop wood-working skills if only mdf is used , for cost reasons? How can it take 6 weeks to design a sweet ‘pizza’?
We need to re-work the Technical Schools side so that students who are wasting their talents ‘going to Uni’ and ending up with a huge debt can make better use of their skills and lead happier lives. This approach can only be successful if : a)Employers embrace students as investment for the future; but that has to come right from Board level, and not just ticking the ‘current favourite’ box, and b) if the Grant system is restored so that all who are eligible can access them.
If a qualified student gets a good job, they will pay their funding back in Council Tax, VAT and Income Tax ; there is no need for the Debt system currently in place.
I learnt more practical skills, and use more Maths from my A-levels (30 years ago…) in my Engineering role than I did from my degree. In my experience, practical skills, intuition and enthusiasm are far more useful than hard theory. Theory can be researched and learnt, common sense and motivation are much harder to teach!
Hear, hear !
You can’t have A-levels for everyone.
A-levels are fine if you are heading to a degree (assuming a degree is right for all those students!). A-levels are relatively complex compared to other countries, hence the year less on many degrees.
More courses need useful personal & business maths adding (mortgage, pension, capex investment, basic accounting, etc.). Imagine if EVERY student covered that stuff in a concise structured module.
It would be great if BTECs were a sensible option for a 6th former who wanted to do 2 A-levels and 1 BTEC, but the gap is too big. Many schools and universities consider BTECS (and even certain A-levels) to be “soft”.
GCSE is important because it is the last common point before everyone goes their separate ways. But some of it is way too obscure and complex for most adults’ lives. Why make EVERYONE do the full core maths part of GCSE?
A-Levels are not supposed to set you up for a job, they are a base to expand off. Maybe the employers should stop expecting a “school kid” to be ready at first to do the job you want them too. If you cant take someone with a good base knowledge and make them into a success then its the company at fault. Common sense is what we lack these days especially among young engineers.
Why revolution rather than evolution ? Adapt the curriculum rather than throw the whole thing up in the air with yet another major change. I took School certificate then the first of he “A” levels. “O” levels became GCE and then GCSE. When recruiting I had no experience of GCE or GCSE . I recall interviewing someone with a Cambridge degree in French who could not speak French and didn’t understand why I was puzzled. Apparently his degree was concerned with French literature so he did not need to speak the language ! I would keep the structure but tweek the content to suit changing times.
Education policy by successive governments has been to try to outdo the other party in terms of numbers of people that go to university, whether university is right for them or not. Or whether it is right for the country to give so many people false hopes for their future with the degree that they think will automatically give them high earnings potential.
A levels should be reserved for those genuine candidates who can benefit from university education and not as a general exam. In fact, as it used to be before party politics became involved.
Students need depth for university courses but breadth for direct employability. The previous system with the ability to study five subjects for a year then specialise in three of four of them for the second year seemed to be a good balance to me. It also gave students a better idea of which subjects they wanted to study in more depth, while keeping the advantage of the Scottish highers system.
“Within the next decade”? No great sense of urgency, then …
Here we go again, another government potentially messing about with the education system.
In my perverse way of thinking, I had this idea that the purpose of schools was to educate people not to prepare fodder for the commercial market. If companies really value A-levels then ‘supply and demand’ will kick in and students will know from job descriptions what to study ‘if’ they want a job.
We need consistency in education, keep the politicians and royal society well away.
My nephew is 17 and will sit his A level exams shortly. He is a bright lad but has consistently been pushed down the business route rather than a science or engineering discipline. My twin daughters are 12 and just selecting their options for GCSE. Their school is consistently considered one of the highest achievers in the area. Yet, and I should not be surprised, the deputy head stood in front of a forum full of parents and advised their children against taking certain ‘difficult’ subjects, including to my horror Computer Science. Therein lies the problem with British Education. It is no longer about providing our future generations with the necessary tools to compete in a global market but to tick boxes and make sure the school gets a good Ofsted report. Universities are now big businesses. This is starting to crumble though as we fall down the education leagues. Corporations want to employ graduates. Often they are not interested in the degree held, more that the potential employee has been through the University process. So kids will do the easiest degree possible to ‘tick’ the box. Hence, we end up with a workforce without the necessary skills and have to import our engineers, researchers, designers etc. The teachers themselves are more like social workers. They teach about the effects of bullying but it seems to be more prevalent now than back in my day. With the amount of paperwork they have to fill in I am amazed they get any teaching done. No wonder so many are leaving the profession. It also does not help when you have these z list celebs making a small fortune for behaving like idiots. We have become a service country but how long can this be maintained when our imports far exceed our exports. There are no shortage of lawyers. In fact I worked for a firm of solicitors and for each training place we would have 500 plus applications each year. Yet what revenue do they generate for this country? London has its own economy. The rich bankers don’t care about anything as long as they are making money and have got cheap labour to service them. That’s why they are so scared of Brexit but we all know they will get there servants from somewhere. Revolution. What was the question? Oh yeah. So this decline in our education system goes back to the introduction of the GCSE when to make school more ‘accessible’ for everybody the exams were dumbed down. This was done so everybody feels included, but in my mind is to the detriment of the brightest who are not pushed to achieve their full potential.
Great post, Mark, I agree with almost everything you wrote.
I intend to leave the UK, but if I find I need to stay for some reason, then I will endeavor to keep my (currently non-existent) kids away from the school system as long as possible.
Schools need to take the focus away from politically motivated agendas and box ticking exercises to make their schools appear better on paper and get back to teaching children real skills and developing what they already have, and actually engage with children to enhance what they have and show them how to enhance them. They need to stop dumbing education down with their silly agendas and teach children about real life and give them realistic goals and ambitions and give those with higher potential life success the opportunity to succeed.
An understanding of English is paramount. By that I don’t mean our literary heritage. I refer to the ability to understand the language and the effects of punctuation and the ability to communicate ideas and meaning. accurately and unambiguously, using a correct choice of words and grammar.
Without a proper understanding of English it is impossible to comprehend the nuances of science topics, computer programming, the law (etc.) and difficult to communicate ideas effectively.
Basic mathematics and science subjects should be taught to all students capable of understanding more than the basics. They brightest should be required to progress further and the brightest challenged.
Students should be given the opportunity to excell. The nonsense of classing every student as a successful pass regardless of standard should cease.
Our world is going to become more complex. If humankind (as a generalisation) understands nothing other than what can be fitted into a standard tweet we have reached the point of the decline of Western Civilisation.
By all means, let students embark upon the humanities, culture, vocational training etc, but not as a replacement for the basics. Insist that these are a reward for first mastering the basics.
The most important and most urgent assessment of education is not of the assessment of the end product; but of the effectiveness as motivators of the teachers and the educational standard of these same educators.
Is teaching still a profession?
Similar to other professionals, to continue to be regarded as a professional in the 21st century the educators need to be undertaking professional development courses, education in their subject matter and formal assessment of their own personal mastery of their subject.
It defies reason that so much of of what is taught, how it is taught or the results of that teaching have never been subjected to evidence based research.
I agree with nearly all above. Government set up state education to improve the quality of the workforce and keep us competitive in the world. They are therefore entitled to tinker. One problem is the risk that their tinkering is inept. As long as we are governed exclusively by accountants and lawyers there is always a good chance they will get it wrong.
If universities want to offer courses in knitting and there is a market for it then by all means. The students (or their parents) are paying for it, but one way (for the government) to encourage what we need is to make the STEM courses more accessible by increased subsidy.
I agree if we are going to get school kids more interested in the ‘difficult’ subjects (see above) then perhaps we need a different way for Ofsted to assess our schools. The present system is providing too many candidates for a degree in knitting.
What a broad and valuable set of comments: might I add a few more.
Having been ejected from three so-called Universities for getting far to close to the truth when commenting about their limitations[ they actually, even in STEM topics, offer ‘stuff’ for the 2% of students who, incapable of doing anything else, will remain in so-called Higher Education, rather that material that might benefit the 98% who won’t.
Schools burdened by syllabus (is that spelt right?) created by those who themselves have little understanding of the real world (Exam Boards based upon University ‘stuff’ -see above!)
I do recall a communication from the Chancellor of Oxford, assuring me that ‘good’ students learn in spite of their teachers, not because of them: so nothing new there! [Though quite why they are paying £9,000 per annum for this is unclear. ]
Civil servants who are neither civil, nor give much service. Cassandra rides again?
Several do! and I had the privilege of giving some lectures thereon and therein!
Interestingly, the knitting machine was invented by an Elizabethan Nottinghamshire vicar, the Rev William Lee, who noted that his parishioners were skipping church to spend time hand-knitting : there was a run on doublet-and-hose(!) in Court circles…
Knitting was actually brought back to Europe by returning Crusaders (long warm stockings were worn by Saladin’s followers to combat the cold in desert areas at night) and the Crusaders saw the ‘stitch’ and recognised that, made with wire, it might represent much cheaper chain-mail.
Prior to that each ‘loop in mail was a one-off with a hole, pin/rivet to join such to its neighbour: extremely expensive such that only the very wealthy Knights could afford it. Unfortunately wire of sufficient length and malleability was not then available.
More on the MJB introduction to knitting lecture if you wish it!
Love your reply!!! Knitting has so much engineering in it and should not be sneered at!!! Also-I would be quite interested in an employee who actually created something in their spare time, rather than just played computer games all day.
It appears that academia is being recognized for what it is, the Wizard of OZ.
I believe that success is not what you know or what you do, it is what you do with what you know.
That reminds me of a wonderful quote by William Jennings Bryan ~ Destiny is not a matter of chance, it is a matter of choice: it is not a thing to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
Having studied A-Levels in the last decade two things come to mind, the first is teacher quality. My physics teacher was excellent and would have us endlessly performing experiments to figure out correlation before making us read any theory which helped the experience to stick.
Other teachers were less active and as a result i did better in physics which is likely what pushed me into engineering in the first place.
The second point was summarised by my form teacher at the start of the year,
“Now you have left school you should realise that we are no longer obliged to provide you with an education, if the effort and attendance isn’t up to scratch you won’t make it to the exam hall”
Regardless of what grades you were aiming for the college would endeavor to help you achieve your goal, so long as you took an active role in your own learning. I’m not sure if that is the case now since education is mandatory until 18.
For me the quality of the teacher is more important than making minor changes to curriculum, that and allowing colleges to remove pupils who simply don’t care and act as a drag on everyone else
I will second Skelly’s comment: and add
There are two types of people on our planet: those who can ‘TEACH’ and those who cannot teach, but merely act as mouthpieces -not much different from the Abbot who sat at the end of the cloister reading out the Bible or some other religious text for the novices to copy down. The subject topic and level being offered is much less important than that enthusiasm for learning that a real teacher can inspire.[Why am I thinking of Maggie Smith and “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie!” or Robin Williams and “Dead Poets’ Society?”
I too had the benefit of an outstanding Physics Teacher (His name was Dole) -heavens, its 60 years ago- and I would have gone on to Read Physics at Bristol, but for the great good fortune? to fail A level maths the first time. I had to re-take, worked as a student apprentice in an Engineering firm for a year, and realised that my first interest was the application of Science, NOT its purity! It was my great good fortune, nominated by my students at Exeter, to win outright the Higher Education Academy prize for best UK Engineering/management lecturer in session 2003/4. Which is surprising, as I had been ejected from one University (which operated the abbot and monk’s method) for being such a poor teacher. I kid you not. Those responsible have had several years to contemplate when their disgraceful action(s) will be broadcast: an essential part of my academic research.
What was wrong with those ONC and HNC courses of old?
But the debate reminds me of a furious discussion we had at work lasting several days , on the difference between education and training.
The problem was resoved when someone came in one morning and announced the answer. He said that if your daughter came home from school and said she had attended a sex education lesson, then you would be OK with that
But, if she came home and said she had attended …..
I have volunteered through Inspiring Apprenticeships during National Apprenticeship Week to meet and talk to year 10 students at a Secondary School Accademy It is not the first time myself and others have attended similar events over a number of years. The positive feedback from the students provided by teachers is very inspirational indeed. A lot of times the students do not even know what different jobs are available or what is entailed.
Good teachers who are motivated themselves can identify each students individual potential and with help and guidance from parents and grandparents steer our youth onto the most suited career paths. You can not fit square pegs into round holes and expect perfect fit.
I agree with much of what is written above, and have watched (in despair) over 15 or more years with successive Governments publishing statistics suggesting that GCSE standards are continually improving year on year – do they think the public are all completely daft..? And now the situation that most school leavers are pushed into ‘Universities’ to obtain ‘degrees’.
Anyway, on a slightly different tack, I’d just like to take slight issue with the ‘poll’ questions posed by The Engineer: it could be argued that the most appropriate response is ‘2, 3 and 4’, not ‘none of the above’..?