LEADERS of independent schools led a new charge for reform of the examination system yesterday, after the publication of new figures showing that almost half the A levels taken by their pupils this summer were awarded an A grade.

Ralph Townsend, head of Winchester College, one of the country’s top independent schools, criticised the A-level system for denying teenagers the chance to grow up before they are tested.

He said that modular A levels, in which pupils take a series of exams over two years, did not allow students the opportunity to develop “emotional maturity”.

For humanities subjects, such as history, English and foreign languages, this was a significant problem. The old system, in which exams were taken at the end of a two-year course, was better, he said.

Winchester has already dropped the modular English A-level course in favour of Cambridge’s more demanding international A level, which is examined after two years of study.

“We felt that the extra flexibility allowed in the first year of the course and the maturity that the boys can acquire over a two-year period were a definite advantage,” Dr Townsend said.

However, he supported the idea of teaching a range of sixth-form courses, in which some subjects remain modular.

Ministers reformed A levels in 2000 and students now study six units over two years, with the first three usually assessed at the end of the first year.

Critics claimed that dividing the A level in this way made it easier to get good grades but did not necessarily give students the best preparation for life.

Bernice McCabe, headmistress of the North London Collegiate School for girls, which has introduced the more challenging International Baccalaureate exam alongside traditional A levels, said: “For very academic pupils, I’m not sure that testing in bite-sized chunks is a good preparation for university because it very much leads the pupils by the hand. It, perhaps, does not help them to think for themselves.”

The renewed pressure for reform of the system followed publication yesterday of record results from the 31,700 pupils at 484 independent schools.

According to the Independent Schools Council (ISC), 47.9 per cent of A-level passes attained by fee-paying pupils were at grade A, up from 46 per cent last year.

The proportion of A grades awarded to pupils at private schools was nearly double the national average of 24.1 per cent. Three quarters of grades achieved in the independent sector, 74.3 per cent, were As and Bs this year. Only 0.6 per cent of entries failed to get at least a grade E. The national average was 3.4 per cent.

While welcoming the results, Edward Gould, the chairman of the ISC, said that the lack of differentiation among those gaining the top grade continued to cause concern to universities. He argued that the introduction of harder questions would enable universities to identify the brightest students from the merely well-schooled.

“It is to be hoped that any proposals for further differentiation at the highest level will be linked to more challenging and demanding questions and not statistical slicing of the current assessment regime,” he said.

Ministers are already considering the introduction of a new A* grade at A level. They are debating whether to introduce harder questions to papers taken by all candidates in any given subject, or whether to set the more challenging questions in a separate, optional section of the exam.

The Government’s advisers have given warning that making tougher questions optional would risk reducing the number of pupils who tackle them. But ministers have objected to making the harder questions integral to the papers because it would change the standard of the exams.

They have agreed, however, to give universities the results of individual A-level units to help them to distinguish between the most able applicants.

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