England’s education system has become “fatally distorted” by an unhealthy fixation with anachronistic exams that ill prepare students for university, a leading academic has claimed.

Niall Ferguson, Professor of History at Harvard and a senior research Fellow at Oxford, said teenagers in England were handicapped by an overemphasis on timed examinations and being forced to chose too early between arts and sciences.

Professor Ferguson blamed “the tyranny of A levels” for forcing teenagers into narrowly defined paths of study. He called for them to be replaced with a baccalaureate-style qualification covering a broad mix of arts and science subjects and involving an element of independent research rather than assessment purely by examinations.

Technological advances meant that it was necessary for all students to have a broad-based education and to continue maths after the age of 16, he told a conference at Rugby School in Warwickshire yesterday.

Although the new diploma qualification for 14 to 19-year-olds is designed to offer students more continual assessment and to reduce exam pressure, Professor Ferguson dismissed it as “not fit for university”.

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