A-levels 'not being dumbed down'

Some 250,000 A-level candidates get their results this week

A-levels are not being "dumbed down" despite predictions that results will improve for the 22nd year in a row, the head of the UK's exam boards has said.

Ellie Johnson Searle, director of the Joint Council for Qualifications, said she was "confident" they remaines an "international gold standard".

The proportion of A-grade passes is expected to rise from 21.6% to nearer 25% when results come out later this week.

David Thomas, chief executive of the Careers Research Advisory Centre has called for tougher marking by exam boards", describing rising grades as "rather alarming".

'Lenient' marking

Last year, the pass rate for England, Wales and Northern Ireland reached 95.4% and the proportion of entries awarded A-grades rose by 0.9 percentage points to 21.6%.

Although the proportion of 17 and 18-year-olds taking A-levels had doubled in the last generation, pass rates had quadrupled, Mr Thomas said.

While there was no doubt that standards in schools had risen, they had not gone up by nearly enough to generate those sorts of success levels.

In his opinion, A-level examiners asked harder questions than they did a generation ago but marked them more "leniently".

But Dr Johnson-Searle said she was "disappointed" with those who said the improvement in grades was not a true reflection of quality.

She told BBC News Online: "We are confident standards are being maintained.

"We don't want to speculate what's going to happen with this year's A-level results but this is still a world-class qualification."

Ken Boston, chief executive of exam watchdog the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, said standards were being maintained and marking had been completed earlier than usual this year.

This had been aided by a large-scale trial of computerised assessment by exam board Edexcel involving 44 papers.

He added: "Performance is rising against the standard and that's shown by the international league tables."