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Cambridge to take only those with at least 90% in one A level
Tim Ross, Education Correspondent16.03.09
PUPILS hoping to win a place at Cambridge face a tougher task in future after the university announced tighter entry rules today.
Candidates will be required to achieve the new A* grade in at least one A-level subject from 2010 under the reforms.
The A* will be awarded for the first time next year to students who achieve 90 per cent of the available marks in their final A-level exams.
Ministers introduced the new "super grade" amid concerns that the soaring numbers of sixth-formers achieving straight As made it impossible for highly selective universities to identify the brightest students.
Last year Cambridge was forced to reject more than 5,000 candidates who went on to score three As. But researchers have warned that the new grade is likely to be dominated by privately educated candidates and could disadvantage state comprehensive pupils.
Cambridge University's director of admissions, Dr Geoff Parks, said the new rules will be fair. "It's important to recognise that the usual checks and balances will be in place to ensure that all Cambridge applicants will be given careful, detailed consideration and that this decision won't disadvantage students from any one given background over another," he said.
"Colleges continue to have the discretion to make non-standard offers where appropriate."
Both Oxford and Cambridge have been under pressure from ministers to attract more applications from working class candidates. But a government-backed report last year said a "large proportion" of students who will achieve the new A*s are likely to come from independent schools.
Cambridge said the rules were aimed at identifying the best candidates but said the scheme would be kept "under close review".
Oxford has ruled out requiring A*s from candidates for at least the next two years until the new grade settles in.
A spokeswoman for Oxford said: "If it becomes apparent that A* grades are a good indication of aptitude for Oxford courses, we will be interested in looking at them." Professor Alan Smithers, a specialist in exam standards at the University of Buckingham, backed Cambridge's decision. "I think Cambridge is right to take A* into account because it is there to enable universities to distinguish at the top end of performance," he said. "They are likely to be receiving better information."
Professor Smithers criticised the Government's "old fashioned socialist" attempts to measure universities on how many working class pupils win places. Such an approach was not fair to academically gifted students from other backgrounds, he said.
Reader views (5)
Not such a bad idea. The country is awash with degreed layabouts with very little subject matter knowledge. I have had experience working with horticulture graduates who didn't even have the remotest idea of how plants work, how fertiliser works within the plant or even water requirements and these are things that even a basic horticultural diploma from a college would in the past have instilled into their students. Let's get rid of all the Mickey Mouse degrees and make sure that those with a science degree actualy know something about the science that they have studied.
- Dennis, Taplow. U.K.
What's the problem - Cambridge are only trying to keep the standard up to what it used to be. It's not like they're asking for anything extra. It's not their fault that Balls and his predecessors have made educator's lives more difficult with their ideology-first schooling.
- Rogan, Irving
There's an unquestioned assumption that the most eminent universities have a sort of monopoly right over the best brains in the country,. This is itself a sort of brain-drain, and a claiming of privilege. Think of many of the most brilliant figures in our history, Churchill, Lloyd George, Nelson, Wellington, none of whom crossed the threshold of a university.
Whatever their merits, universities homogenise: they produce good employees and organisers. People who break the mould in whatever way have usually bypassed orthodox education in some way or other: just look at those Rich Lists that get published very so often - the self-made are usually not graduates.
Noone ever argues that the Beatles would have done so much better if they'd got degrees in music: if the top universities aren't catching all the brightest, it's alm ost certainly a good thing.
- Mdj E10, london uk
The sad decline of the A-level is a result of the deliberate dumbing down of education, combined with the belief that everyone can be made academically equal. Universities cannot distinguish between pupils all of whom have 5 grade 'A' A-levels. This can be described as the feminisation of education.
- Neil M., london uk,
"likely to be dominated by privately educated candidates and could disadvantage state comprehensive pupils."
Surely they're not saying that Labour have failed to produce decent quality schooling are they? Whatever next?
- Bob, Cheam
