The article is well reasoned until the point "Once someone starts doing it, everyone has to join in to keep up." Recent psychology/game theory studies have shown that many people will take non-optimum positions if others doing so will be beneficial (prisoners' dilema variants).
Exam revision is an example of this- from my experience the exam taking students have kept the amount of revision done overall low, giving everybody better results for less work.
Part of the reason this works is that it take far more than one person to trigger the arms race.

Matthew Clark, Dorset,

Isn't there anybody out there who has noticed that the comment about grade inflation in Italy is ludicrous? I mean, grade inflation is happening everywhere but do you really believe that all Italian students are awarded a score of more than 99%? I'm also astonished at the reliable source of the information: "a colleague".

Mario Rossini, London,

The worst idea I've heard in a while

That system would lead to American-style SATs, which may predict accurately people's math and english aptitude and do so very cheaply (multiple choice are cheap to analyse), but they're not exactly inspiring.

Anyone who's been on the wrong side of Experian will know my second complaint well - if you don't fit the mould, Experian will deem you a terrible credit. I've lost count of the number of friends who are living in London and who can't even get a credit card because they are not to be on the electoral register.

Back to the drawing board Mr Whyte please.

Stephane d'Hyperiac, NYC, USA

Ah the usual summer ritual. Trouble is, everyone wins, except the universities, who have to separate the wheat from the chaff. The "students" get better grades for less work, the companies that set the easier exams get to sell more or them, and the government gets to crow about how much it has improved education. Even if it is as meaningful as Bob Mugabe saying every Zimbabwean is now a millionaire, as long as there's a commercial incentive for the exam boards and we have a corrupt government interested only in power, the truth is of secondary importance.

Syd, Cambridge,

Brilliant! Excellent idea! Make it so!

Rosie, Upminster,

Some good lateral thinking there, Jamie, although here's one problem with it:

The move you propose is predicated on the idea that the main function of A-levels is to get students into university. That this is its purpose would become even more stark if universities paid for students to take A-levels rather than they themselves.

The purpose of secondary education and standardised examination at the end of it is not just to select students for university, but to ensure that our 18 year olds are educated to something approximating a civilised and common standard whatever they go on to do after school. This is not the case now, but the ideal. A single examination board (rather than three - AQA, OCR, Edexel) independent of government might do the trick.

Ben Kotzee, Watford, Herts,

This is an interesting idea, but please don't pick on Further Mathematics without understanding the reasons behind the large proportion of A grades. So many students get A grades in Further Mathematics because it is usually only the very strongest A level Mathematics students, studying in schools and colleges with strong mathematics departments, that are encouraged to take it. In fact it is widely recognised by maths and science educators and university departments as being one of the most demanding subjects at A level.

The Further Mathematics Network has helped to bring about very large increases in the number of students taking Further Mathemaics in recent years, by making tuition available to students, even if they are studying in schools and colleges unable to offer it themselves. Please see our website at www.fmnetwork.org.uk.

Charlie Stripp, Exeter, Devon

Another solution might be to take government interference out of the exam system

John Ledbury, Kings Lynn, England

Your idea fails on one point - there is only one acknowleged exam body per area (England, Scotland, Ireland etc), so there is a monopoly on exam bodies. This means tha the body can charge what it wants from schools for exam marking, and is not competing for higher quality, as it would if there were other bodies in the market. Thus, it does not need to bend to its customers' wills.

I think that having a percentage system is a bad idea, partly because it is unfair on students between years - why should one student who gets 89% not get an A when a student who got 88% the year before get one? We could end up with one year group getting As for scores of 30 or 40%, as long as that was the top 10% of scores, which undermines an exam's worth. Also, it doesn't allow scores to improve, which they should be doing if teaching and classroom atmosphere improve.

The only thing we can do is to monitor exams through the years to make sure thy aren't getting easier.

rosie, UK,

We have just fledged another cohort to University and the world of work. Make no bones about this; a further 3 years of study is for many middle class children the way forward, as it has been since the expansion of University provision in the 60s. The significant majority of our cohort will not be 3Bs or better, but they will go off to study, return to family and to work in 3 years time the financially poorer but intellectually wiser for the experience. Given that the vast majority of University places are not incumbent on the applicants gaining 3A grades, moving back to the quota system is the way forwards. That is where we were before the arrival of new education in the 1980s. As for the Merchant bankers solution on the wisdom of credit worthiness – the current freefall of the world markets demonstrates that any advice from financiers needs to carefully balanced against the weight of solids hitting the fan.

James Wilding, Maidenhead, Berks

Anthony Charlton, no one has suggested your idea because the government and all its disciples don't like simple solutions. The more opaque the better.

Lala, london,

When I took my A levels *cough* years ago, I understood that grades were aportioned by placing your mark on a normal distribution curve for that year. In order to get an A you had to rank with the best of that exam.

Is this not the case any more?

Brian, Cirencester, UK

Raising educational standards has been a big part of government policy for nearly three decades (18 Tory years, 10 Labour). Does it not enter our tiny, little minds that perhaps educational standards might actually have risen for real because of this?

Matthew, Ringwood, UK

Agree with gist of the article in general but agree too with Jamie Gilmour that the problem of multiple exam boards needs to be eliminated - currently schools can cherry pick which boards they use to ensure an easier exam for pupils which isn't reflected when grades are reported. There needs to be a maximum of two boards to ensure parity and prevent inconsistency of marking/satandards

Dan James, London,

Pure genius. Jamie Whyte is the most insightful writer on the Times.

Redcliffe, London,

I have just been watching the BBC lunchtime news interviewing some Education Minister (thick-as-a-brick comes to mind).
I started to listen more carefully when he flatly denied that private sector schools got better results than state schools - blandly denying the government figures quoted by the interviewer.
His moment of triumph however was to claim that A level standards had not slipped "because only 40% of all pupils get 1 or more A levels" - tragically the interviewer did not then ask how the government proposed to choose the other 10% to meet their 50% university attendance target!

Mike Bibby, St Albans, England -not EU

Not quite sure of the mechanics of this. Would the schools then have to buy the exams from the Universities? Why not abolish multiple exam boards and have one National board. Spot tests would again be very hard to administer. People cram for University exams too.

Robert Grundy, London,

I don't understand how this would work. You're saying that the universities should buy the exams instead of students/schools. But then what if 5 universities then purchase 5 differernt Maths exams (say)? Would a student who wanted to apply to do Maths at those universities have to sit all 5 exams? Maybe I've misunderstood what you are suggesting perhaps someone else could clarify if how I've taken it is right.

Totallly agree that A-levels have been dumbed down though. All (non-senior level i.e. non-biased) teachers seem to think so and it was certainlly my experience (I'm 19).

Tim, Maidenhead,

All sounds very sensible.

However, I'm not entirely clear that the universities are entirely independent in this respect. Current funding arrangements encourage them to accept as many students as possible, so these incentives would have to be tackled at the same time.

In any case, even though Jamie's proposal would save public money, the government has an incentive to encourage grade inflation because it runs the education system. It wants people to think it is doing a good job.

The only real solution is for the government to get out of the education business altogether.

Hj, Reading, UK

Why not link each grade to a percentile: so an 'A' goes to the top 10% of exam scores, a B to the next 10%, and so on - regardless of what those scores are.

Since students nationwide do not get smarter every year - despite what the government wants to believe - this would restore the "gold standard" image of A-levels. An A-grade would be guaranteed to put you among the best.

The current system could be retained in parallel, but not as a headline grade - only as an internal indicator to show consistent quality from one year to the next.

I don't know why no-one else has suggested this as a serious idea.

Anthony Charlton, Swindon,

Making all maths students, for example, take the same exam seems common sense to me. I never understood whyt here were so many exam boards. But if the boards worked for the universities, wouldn't students be in a position of having to take more than one kind of, say, maths A-level, depending on where they wanted to apply to?

If the Government can set a National Curriculum, why doesn't it just set the exam papers too? Then at least we would know that everyone was being judged the same way.

Something else to think about - just because more people get A grades every year, it does not necessarily mean that the exams are easier. More people climb Everest every year - has it become lower? No, techniques and equipment have improved.

Julia, London,

The problem with this idea is that it seems to either divorce syllabus from examination or the educational establishment from the syllabus.

By doing the first all you achieve is a well graded but underperforming product (we currently have a badly graded AND underperforming product). If you do the latter you are moving to a fully deregulated model that our liberal-left ruling elite would not accept.

To achieve both good grading and high quality at the top end of the grades you need to first remove social engineering from the educational system. Only then can you address the problems in the examination system.

Paul Holden, northants,

Coming from the banking world, Mr Whyte makes a very valid comparison, and as is commented: such good ideas are thus unlikely to come to pass. A maxim of law states "let the buyer beware". Now since universities up and down the land annually demoan the academic standards of many now entering universities - lack of reading and writing skills, minimal levels of general knowledge and so on, perhaps the solution might lie within their own grasps. To explain: If the universities demanded greater and better information as to the academic abilities of a prospective under-graduate instead of relying so heavily on A-level results and them alone, this might force schools into providing it by being more selective as to the examination board they buy into. This may in turn encourage the examination boards to provide a fuller and more accurate representation of the abilities, general knowledge, and potential of that candidate. But until then let us all cry "Hurrah"; less "fail" be heard again.

Jason, Reading, UK

Absolutely right. It is also particularly pertinent when flipped on its head in the context of corporate credit ratings where the rating agencies are paid by the companies that they are rating. The current doubts about many issuers triple-A ratings in the light of the recent market has raised concerns, reported elsewhere in this papre and others, about a system where evaluation is performed for the person being evaluated.

p.s. HIPS anyone?

Alex, London, England

While credit scoring does provide for consistency and objectivity in credit decisions, let's not forget that it's the banks and other lenders who set the scoring criteria, not the credit reference agencies. As a result, an individual's credit score will vary from one lender to the next and sometimes from one product to another, according to each lender's policies.

So perhaps it's the higher education institutions that should be awarding students’ A level grades, which is a rather interesting but probably quite unworkable!

On the issue of gaming, because banks do not share details of credit balances with each other (through the agencies), just details of what you have borrowed and how you have repaid it, your mother would probably be wise keeping her money to herself.

James Jones, Nottingham, UK

One huge problem here.

The government wants exam grades to increase.

They invest extra money in schools and make exams easier, then point to the increase in A's and say, "look, we're making you children better educated".

As long as the government is involved in education, targets will be met at the cost of education

Dominic, Manchester, UK

This is an example of the fallacy of linearity - it is not a problem if all marks are reported between 99 and 100 if we have enough reported precision to make the distinction. It seems Italy has this and we don't - the detail "Cambridge" needs is obscured by the reduction of a mark to a grade. We do this because we have multiple boards and want to have comparable results - they can't be comparable at the required precision since they use different assessments. We have multiple boards so they compete with one another, supposedly to drive costs down but really, I think, because that establishes the grade inflation mechanism that our government needs for PR purposes.

What we need is all candidates facing the same assessment in each subject. We should then report percentage scores rather than grades, rank order, no, of candidates in the cohort, and some estimate of uncertainty in the rank order. Universities (and others) would then have the precision in information that they need.

Jamie Gilmour, Bolton, UK

In the olden days of course, when I took my O and A levels, and we were awarded real marks and not grades, the exams were run by non commercial regional boards from local universities. Far better than the present scheme where I understand schools can shop around to choose the exam 'board' which offers the easiest route to apparent success...

Michael, London, UK

Overall excellent, but....

Admitting weak students is only "bad for business" for universities if it's reflected in increased drop-out rates and fewer and worse degrees awarded. Your strategy would increase the pressure on universities to inflate their own degree grades - something you point out already afflicting the Italian system. While I'm confident Cambridge and the Other Place are able to withstand to such pressures, not everyone will be. Logically, one can see a situation in which you would in the future have to propose a system in which universities only collected their tuition fees if employers were satisfied that the degrees awarded to their new recruits by universities had not been inflated. And so on....

Ian Kemmish, Biggleswade, UK

The only snag with this idea is that it will be opposed by parents who want darling to get a high grade, not an accurate one.

And teachers who'll fear, not so much their ability to teach being assessed, but being trapped in a world where the grades are somehow regarded as reflecting their ability to teach while they're unable to actually teach effectively because of the restrictions placed on them by central government's inept micromanagement.

And schools, who will fear a fair assessment driving pupils into the arms of the successful schools.

Oh, and the government, who won't be able to annually claim that this ridiculous year-on-year rise is due to their incessant fiddling with the education system that's so annying the teachers. It might show up education to be a mess.

So basically, as long as can you convince the other 40 million people involved in the system that their pain will be worth it, it'll probably work brilliantly...

Katie, Cambridge, UK

A mostly sensible article, with a piece of grade A lunacy near the end. Randomise exam dates? Sure, and to avoid 'gaming' on taxes, as accountants are apparently wont to do, why not randomise the end of the financial year? Or, to avoid 'gaming' in politics through party political broadcasts etc, we could randomise general elections. What could possibly go wrong?

Ed Birkhead, Cambridge, UK

In the olden days of course, when I took my O and A levels, and we were awarded real marks and not grades, the exams were run by non commercial regional boards from local universities. Far better than the present scheme where I understand schools can shop around to choose the exam 'board' which offers the easiest route to apparent success...

Michael, London, UK

Brilliant as ever - and thus unlikely ever to be taken up. Great dissection of why grade inflation occurs.

Tim, London,

Why not make A levels competitive? - if it was fixed so that the top 15% get A, next 15% get Bs etc then it'd sort the more able from others.

This would also show which schools were performing.

The average percentage score across the country could be used to see if education standards were improving.

The current system descriminates against the brightest.

Adam Wilkins, Gloucester, UK

Another cause of grade inflation at A level is the decision many years ago, when GCSEs replaced O levels, to remove the hierarchy in which O level courses prepared students for A levels which in turn prepared them for University.

GCSE courses were introduced as ends in themselves with factors such as 'relevance to everyday life' determining their content.
Every subsequent revision of the GCSE syllabus in science, which I've both taught and examined since 1980, has reduced academic rigour to the extent that there is little remaining.

In turn A level syllabuses have had to be dumbed down to ensure that students are able to progress onto them from GCSE. Thus A level students end up with higher grades but knowing less science than their predecessors, a fact that university lecturers have been reporting and accommodating for the past twenty years or more.

Malcolm Williamson, Welwyn Garden City, UK

Good idea; unfortunately that means it is highly unlikely that it will come to pass.
If the government tried to implement it, it would only make a mess of things; and universities won't do it on the basis of cost.

Richard Black, Newcastle,