A LEVELS and GCSEs will be made more rigorous in response to complaints from universities that the current intake of students is the weakest in history.

Mike Tomlinson, chairman of a government working party on reforming the 14-19 age group qualifications, said that the trend for pupils to be “led by the hand” through multiple-choice questions would be reversed. Candidates will be expected to sit O-levelstyle papers requiring them to write more open-ended essays.

Mr Tomlinson, whose committee will report next summer, said that the change to more structured questioning since the introduction of GCSEs meant that many students could no longer assemble a cogent argument without prompting. As a result, universities were effectively having to put them on remedial courses.

“If (multiple-choice papers) are allowed to dominate over other assessment measures, we risk losing skills which are important, such as logical argument and reflection,” Mr Tomlinson said at the annual conference of the Girls’ Schools Association, in St Andrew’s.

“Universities are saying that students cannot sustain an argument as much as they used to. The trend in A level has been towards exam papers that ensure that students have covered the entire. . . syllabus.

“That means there are structured questions, where students are led through the phases of a topic, and some multiple-choice questions.

“Part of what you want to identify is the ability to answer open-ended questions in a way that shows candidates can marshal facts and arguments and come to a logical conclusion. It may be that exams at present don’t give the brightest candidates the opportunity to do that.”

The change, which will be most pronounced in the arts subjects, will be tied to a complete overhaul of the system. By the end of the decade, Mr Tomlinson expects that a continental-style diploma will have replaced the rigid system of GCSEs and A levels.

He said that he also intended to end the approach under which pupils are encouraged to amass 13 or 14 GCSEs to impress admissions tutors rather than studying fewer subjects in greater depth.

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