School Gate Blog: What studying for A levels is really like

School subjects should be ranked according to difficulty to help pupils and academics determine the merits of a particular set of A levels, a leading education expert has said.

All subjects are not equal and Government exam agencies should introduce league tables reflecting this, Professor Peter Tymms, director of the Centre for Education and Monitoring at Durham University, said today.

He also called for university subject tables to recognise the fact that the same degrees from different universities are not of equal quality.

“It is not reasonable to expect that the difficulty of subjects are made equal by exam bodies.

“An A in physics is not the same as an A in theatre studies. A first from Cambridge is not the same as a first from another university. We need to look at league tables of subject difficulty,” Professor Tymms told a meeting of exam regulators and education policy makers.

His comments are a barb to the supporters of standardisation of exam grades which critics say is dumbing down the more academic subjects.

Fears that people will be offended if told they took soft or easy A levels have prevented the Government from admitting that some subjects are harder than others, Professor Tymms added.

“There is no debate that some subjects are graded more harshly than others. There is a real problem with making subjects similar difficulty.

“If you shifted them all to be the same then everyone doing further maths would get an A* and everyone doing theatre studies would fail. We need to look at the relative difficulty of subjects.”

A spokesman for the Department for Schools said: “We simply don't recognise the labels ‘soft’ or ‘hard’ A-levels. All subjects are rigorously measured against each other to maintain standards.”

“The new independent regulator, Ofqual, has been set up precisely to maintain rigorous standards and control the exam and qualifications system tightly.”

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