Alphabet Soup, Acronym Crackers

Once upon a time, when I was way too young to know anything about education policies, principles & pass rates, every school child took either 'O' levels if you had some sort of demonstrable academic ability, or CSEs if you didn't (or possibly a mixture, but that's digressing..). The system approximately expressed the division between grammar schools and secondary moderns, but tended to make less sense as more schools went comprehensives, so the introduction of GCSEs in the late 1980s was long overdue.

However, this soon translated to GCSEs effectively becoming CSEs for everyone to the extent that the proportion of students obtaining top grades is now three times what it was when they were introduced (and looking through old papers from my sister's year to my own 10 years previously shows how dumbed down they were to begin with).

This means that Michael Gove's desire to ditch GCSEs in favour of a restored 'O' level-type qualification is somewhat idealistic, but its also unlikely that the latest scheme would survive the inevitable avalanche of criticism from the educational establishment even if his coalition partners weren't dead set against it.

It raises the conundrum that any exam possessing sufficient rigour to be worthwhile, will by definition be too difficult for a minority of pupils to pass, regardless of any improvements that are made in teaching, and so requires some sort of different provision for those less able.

So if we take the position that GCSEs are now discredited with their grades inflated into meaninglessness, is the best solution to replace them with a new examination system that would, in a few years' time, fall victim to exactly the same process of grade inflation and declining confidence?

Far better then to just get rid of them, particularly as post-16 qualifications make no sense when the normal school leaving age will be 18 from 2015 and it is surely logical for the main assessment of academic achievement to coincide with the final year of school? Taking GCSEs out of the picture would then leave a convenient opening for AS levels to be introduced to slightly younger students with minimum disruption and cost as teachers are familiar with them and they integrate with 'A'-levels in a way that GCSEs never have.