The problem has been obvious to everybody except ministers and their apparatchiks for years: too many A-level candidates are awarded top grades.

It is now almost impossible to fail the A-level examination. This year’s pass rate was 97.2%. More than 50% of candidates were awarded an A or B grade. More than one in 10 scooped the jackpot with three or more A grades. Virtually every successful applicant to Cambridge this summer had three grade As. So, perhaps more surprisingly, had 5,000 further unsuccessful applicants.

Examinations exist in order to identify the best students. The A-level tests no longer do this. The procedure should, therefore, be made more intellectually demanding so that fewer candidates achieve top grades, more fail, and university admissions tutors know which applicants really deserve a place. A quota system which limited the number of candidates who could be awarded an A grade to, say, 10% of the number of students sitting the examination, would help too.

Will it happen? No. This government wants prizes for all. The fact that the rewards are meaningless and that A-levels are no longer fit for purpose does not matter.

Multimedia

• Sunday Times University Guide table

How to pay for university: There's no better time to study

Sue Leonard explains how to finance your way through university

Double first for Oxford

Tutors favour London and Oxford ahead of Cambridge, writes Alastair McCall

Loughborough University: Excellence to benefit industry

Life at Loughborough is not just orientated to sport but its ethos is all about winning, reports Alastair McCall

After much agonising, ministers have decided to introduce an A* grade, to be awarded in 2010.

They were worried that a new supergrade would “devalue” the traditional A result.

Now some universities are concerned that state school applicants will not be as well prepared for the demands of the A* as candidates from independent schools, and are saying they will ignore the new grade. I would have thought they would have welcomed it with open arms, but vice-chancellors, it seems, can be as soggy in their misguided egalitarianism as ministers.

One in seven universities are, however, now using their own entrance tests in heavily oversubscribed subjects such as medicine and law. The recently retired rector of Imperial College, Sir Richard Sykes, is certain more will follow.

Calling for radical action to “save” bright students, he announced earlier this year that Imperial would use tests in subjects other than medicine, stating that there was no other way of “separating the best students”.

He is right. Given that the A-levels are not delivering the intelligence universities need, the increasing use of such tests is inevitable. So, too, is the arrival of a new examination, the pre-U, developed by the University of Cambridge International Examinations board in collaboration with a number of leading independent schools as an alternative to A-levels.

This initiative seeks to remedy some of the faults of the current system, stiffening the rigour of individual subjects and replacing modularity, in which candidates are assessed on units of work through the course, with a traditional final examination.

The pre-U, like the International Baccalaureate (IB), is an academic examination. Ed Balls, the secretary for children, schools and families, disapproves. His great aim is “to bridge the gap between the academic and the vocational”, and, aided and abetted by his diploma champion, Sir Mike Tomlinson (a former chief inspector of schools who does not understand the difference between education and training), he wants A-levels and, presumably, all other academic examinations, to be replaced by one programme of study which provides “the right learning opportunity for every young person, personalised to their needs, aptitudes and aspirations”.

Times recommends

• Minister sacked over fake degree
• Student grant blunder will hit 80,000 families
• Half of Cambridge students admit cheating