AN ABUNDANCE of top grades in this year’s A-level and GCSE results shows that the exams are too easy and must be reformed, the deputy head of an independent school said yesterday.

As almost 600,000 students receive their results today, Richard Cairns, of Magdalen College school in Oxford, said that all 83 pupils who sat English and maths GCSE had achieved an A* or A grade and that no grades fell below A for those who took German, Greek, Spanish, religious studies, chemistry and geography.

Mr Cairns, who becomes the headmaster of Brighton College next term, also accused the Government of failing the top 5 per cent of students and called for a return of state-funded scholarships for poorer, gifted pupils to attend private schools.

The exceptional results come a week after 51 of the 73 boys taking A levels at the school achieved at least three As. Mr Cairns said: “GCSEs and A levels are just too easy.” The results demonstrated that the exams no longer stretch the most able students. “Pupils are thinking they need to do more and more in order to differentiate themselves from others so they are piling on more subjects rather than trying to stretch themselves by doing something different and challenging. It’s like building 15 roads rather than building a bridge. They are not being stretched intellectually.”

The proportion of pupils getting five good GCSE passes has risen by 8.6 percentage points since Labour came to power in 1997, from 45.1 to 53.7 last year. That figure is also expected to rise for GCSEs results released today.

Mr Cairns said that the Government was neglecting the top 5 per cent and suggested that independent schools were better able than those in the state sector to provide further academic challenges to able students.

Magdalen’s performance at GCSE and A level was “obviously very pleasing” for the boys, he said. “But it also demonstrates why we can no longer depend on GCSE or A-level examiners to stretch and challenge our most able students.” It was now up to individual schools to provide that extra intellectual stimulation that bright teenagers need. “Some very clever boys and girls from academically deprived backgrounds are doubtless missing out, their talent squandered,” he said. “There is, in my view, a stronger case than ever for the State to support scholars at leading independent schools, selected on the basis of academic ability and genuine financial need.”

Mr Cairns’s call came as Lord May of Oxford, President of the Royal Society, said that studying science at GCSE was more an exercise in memory than understanding.

“The sciences are truly dynamic and exciting subjects,” he said. “However, the experience of studying science for many GCSE students is one of rote-learning for exams and memorising a few standardised experiments. Consequently we see that many students drop science like a hot potato as soon as they have the opportunity.”

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