Spoon-fed teenagers are taking “sat-nav” A levels that they learn and forget, and sitting hollow exams set by bureaucrats, a think-tank report claims today.

This has created a generation of high-maintenance university students who seek constant advice and are less capable of independent thought or reasoning than their predecessors, the report said.

The report by Reform , an independent think-tank, says the use of modular assessment has “balkanised” A levels, and that universities should take control of the qualification to restore its intellectual integrity.

“Like using a sat-nav rather than a map, students no longer have to think about what they are doing and examiners are prohibited from exercising judgment,” it says.

Researchers from Reform consulted academics in English, maths, chemistry and history at 14 universities, including Oxford and Cambridge. They found that making courses modular had badly affected students’ overall understanding of the subject, particularly in maths.

“Resits have created a group of students who always seek a second chance,” the report said. “Mechanised marking has prevented examiners from rewarding clear flows of argument, originality and flair.” It claimed that intellectual rigour had been weakened in the drive for wider participation.

Academics across all subjects reported that A-level exams now guided and directed candidates much more than previously. This gave students less scope for using their own mind and thinking through problems.

Professor Francis O’Gorman, head of English at Leeds University, said: “For those in universities and beyond endeavouring to teach students how to reason and argue for themselves, it is hard to un-teach the assumption that there are formulaic ways of answering what you are asked,” the report said. “Candidates who have excellent ideas that cannot be fitted into these limits are, it seems, thwarted.”

R.A. Bailey, Professor of Statistics at Queen Mary, University of London, analysed mathematics A levels between 1951 and 2008 for the report. He said many universities had to reteach A-level work in the first year of a degree, because students had taken so many different topics.

“The most important change is that sitting a mathematics A-level paper now is more like using a sat-nav system than reading a map,” he said. “The questions in the 2008 paper are heavily structured and the result is that students will retain very little knowledge and develop very little understanding.

“The questions . . . include hints and instructions about which method to use.

“The questions are mind-numbingly boring, apart from those that are mind-numbingly stupid. We expect our students to take a holistic approach but it seems that they expect it to be compartmentalised.”

Ian Moxon, a history lecturer at Leeds University, said the principal requirement for success in A-level history had previously been “the application of a candidate’s intelligence and critical abilities, sharpened by a limited amount of guidance and practice.

“Now the emphasis is on the practical techniques for studying the past, all of which could be acquired.”

Dr Dewi Lewis, chemistry admissions tutor at University College London, said that frequent assessment meant candidates could revise and forget, adding: “students who would have failed horribly in 1950 could well achieve a good mark”.

While older papers gave less guidance to candidates, the new version led students through the exam in a “sort of quiz or puzzle style, with lots of opportunities to jog their memory”.

Elizabeth Truss, deputy director of Reform, said: “Today’s students are being badly let down by the A-level system. They are not developing what they really need: a spirit of independent inquiry and confidence that will set them up for university and later life.”

The Government said recent changes to A levels meant they contained more open-ended questions.

Iain Wright, the Minister for 14-19 reform, said: “We are introducing new extended projects, which will encourage independent research, planning and study skills — exactly the sort of skills needed at university.”

Times recommends

• Undergraduates to get 'consumer rights'
• Schoolgirls think cosmetic surgery is normal
• Lying parents may face court over school places