The inquiry into the future of A-levels has recommended big changes to the system to make it less confusing.

Mike Tomlinson - who was asked to investigate the fiasco over this year's grades - says the two-part A-level exam should be split into two separate qualifications.

Mr Tomlinson has also called for a more transparent and professional exam system.

Mike Tomlinson answered your questions in a LIVE interactive forum.

Transcript

Newshost:
Welcome to this BBC News Online Interactive forum. I'm Gary Eason.

A-levels fiasco has become a well-known phrase this summer. For many students who took the exams, it has meant anger and frustration. The row over the grading of the exams led to a high profile sacking. But eventually only about 2,000 students' results were upgraded.

The inquiry into what went wrong has now proposed sweeping changes. It was chaired by the former chief inspector of England's schools, Mike Tomlinson and he's here with us to answer your questions.

The first e-mail is from James Allen, Cambridge: Do you consider that the "A2 experiment" has failed (although it need not have done so if the schools and examiners had been clearer about requiring a higher standard in A2?

You could perhaps take the second part of the question first. The higher standard, it wasn't clear to people.

Mike Tomlinson:
No, that was one of the fundamental mistakes that the standard of A2 had not been defined clearly enough and nor had any pilot been done of the A2 examinations. So there were no scripts available that would have also given a measure for the standard and in that sense it left examiners during this summer at a considerable disadvantageous and it was a significant failure.

Newshost:
And the other part of the question - do you consider that the A2 experiment has failed? You've recommended uncoupling the two parts of the exam now - aren't you just setting up a "lame duck" system?

Mike Tomlinson:
No, I don't think the A2 system failed in the sense that the curriculum model that underpins it is well supported by students, teachers and the education community at large. That is that students study more subjects in the first year of the 6th form to get breadth and then go on to study a smaller number in the second year in depth. It hasn't failed. I think what I would agree with is that it wasn't introduced well.

Newshost:
People don't understand the system.

Mike Tomlinson:
Absolutely agreed.

Newshost:
So many people said what's an A2?

Mike Tomlinson:
Exactly and that has been something which has come through very sharply and it points to a failure of communication about a new system to those people who would be subjected to the new system - whether students and their parents - to those who have to teach it and to those who have to consider the qualification at the end in terms of university or employment. So we don't have a record of communication of the changes we were putting in place.

Newshost:
Ben, Reading: I have just recently taken my A levels (A2s) and think that with work, the system is a good one. It has not been given the chance that it deserved and I think that all the politicians should stop arguing and devaluing the A-levels that 99% of those who took them worked hard for.

Mike Tomlinson:
I entirely agree with him. Two points to make on what he says: I think it's a good system. All new systems have teething problems - the A-level when it was introduced in 1950 did. The point however he makes is that we should let it settle down and my report says that we should make no significant changes to the system for five years. Let's get it settled down. Let everyone come to understand what AS and A2 really mean and I think that when we've got that then we can talk about how it should evolve for the future. But I don't want any radical change for five years, which in principle the Secretary of State has accepted.

Equally of course I think it's dreadful each summer that the efforts of students are so readily and so easily decried by some people as - well they don't really earn that, the standard required of them has been lowered. I think that's dreadful particularly when teachers are now teaching better than I've known in my time as an inspector and furthermore students are working harder. You would expect therefore some consequences of those two changes.

Newshost:
C O'Donovan, Leicestershire: What was the justification for selecting only A-levels that had been adjusted by six marks or more in your review?

I think that's not quite right - but there's been some controversy that it could have been broader.

Mike Tomlinson:
Yes. The reason was that every year in examinations the marked grade boundaries proposed by the chief examiners are subject to change - every year that has happened. My request to the boards was to say, what is the normal band of change that you would expect and then to ask how many fell out this, this year. Because what the original controversy was about was that those mark grade boundaries - some of them - had been moved quite dramatically.

So the first point was: tell me all of those units in all of the subjects where the movement of marks had been greater than the norm. Secondly, tell me those units where the mark grade boundaries had been moved by a significant number and where the chair of examiners had not agreed with those changes. That throughout units in 31 different A-level specifications to be looked at - and we looked at all of those.

You mentioned that 2,000 had their A or AS grade changed but actually nearly 10,000 students had at least one unit grade change upwards and for many that will influence the A-level grade that they get in 2003. So it is a significant number, 10,000.

Newshost:
What's going to happen next year?

Mike Tomlinson:
I'm pleased to say that the recommendations in my interim report and further ones in the one we published this week are all being implemented. That will mean for example that the standards are clearly defined and those standards - the definitions, the exemplification of them - will be in schools in January.

Secondly, the code of practice that allows the chief executives of the boards to change mark grade boundaries at the last moment without reference to anyone is being stopped. And that I think will solve all of the issues that I identified. There's a considerable training programme for examiners, markers and the like, being put in place. The Secretary of State announced on Tuesday that I had agreed to monitor what happens in the January and summer examinations and I will report publicly on whether what should have happened, does happen and hence whether students have got the grades that their work deserves.

Newshost:
Cato Stonex, London: Would it not be a much better idea to abolish AS levels altogether and thus avoid having exams every year for the last three years of school?

Mike Tomlinson:
I don't think so. I could understand the question very well.

Newshost:
They are not valued by universities.

Mike Tomlinson:
They are not valued as much as they should be by universities. But that's a matter, I think for the universities to resolve as they come to understand it - this is back to the communication issue. I think though that the place of the AS is to give a national qualification that recognises the work done for students who study the subject for one year but are not intending to study it for it further. It seems quite wrong that they should do a year's study, maybe achieve very highly but get no recognition for it. I think that's wrong - they deserve recognition. So I the AS should stay. But I do think there should be less examination-type assessment associated with the AS. It's too great a burden on students who moved only the year before from a considerable burden of GCSE as well.

Newshost:
Caroline Cook, Leicester: Why can't we have just one exam board?

Mike Tomlinson:
At one level it would make things simpler but there three boards in England but there is a board in Wales and a board in Northern Ireland. So if we'd have reduced the three in England to one, we'd have actually in reality reduced five to three because schools in England still use the Welsh board and still use the Northern Irish board and vice versa.

But the argument that she puts forward is that what she wants is greater consistency i.e. she doesn't want three boards operating different systems whereby there's uncertainty about whether an A grade in that board is equivalent to an A grade in that other board and I think in that sense what I propose in my report is saying, we do need more commonality, we do need more transparency to make sure that that's the case. What teachers told me was that they want the choice of syllabus that are offered across the three boards.

Newshost:
M Hankinson, USA: I was educated in Scotland where there was one examination board - there is surely some value in knowing that every student in the country is being equally examined?

Mike Tomlinson:
Well there is only one exam board in Scotland, that is quite right, but it doesn't follow that there's only one syllabus in a particular subject. That's the point that even with one examination board as of now you would have a number of syllabuses for the same subject. So the question should be - should we be reducing the number of syllabuses rather than getting rid of the boards we've got.

Newshost:
Paul Pavlou, London: One of the recent suggestions for a new examination and university entry system is to delay applications for university places until after examination results have been published. Speaking as a graduate, and someone who has passed 5 A-Levels, I find it hard to imagine a system whereby students do not have a clear goal to aim for. One of the greatest motivations in studying and sitting examinations has always been knowing what you need to achieve to gain entry to your first choice university.

Mike Tomlinson:
It is a good point. To counterbalance that of course there is a huge process that's gone through by students applying on the basis of predicted grades, getting or particularly not getting those grades that they're then asked for and then going through a clearing system and all that happens in a very short space of time. It doesn't, for example, allow for inquiries to the boards to say, is my grade right. That result comes out after the university has made its decision. So for some students, the short time scale is a real problem.

What I think we've got to look for is a system which gives more time to allow the results to be processed and issued and then for students to apply - they may have applied already - but to actually then be given their results before their offer is made. There seems to be a strong support for that including from universities.

Newshost:
I was wondering about that because it would mean a great deal of upheaval in changing the academic year.

Mike Tomlinson:
It would. It might be changing the school year, which of course is being talked about at the moment - into a six-term year. It might mean delaying the start of the year for first year undergraduates - not the second and third year undergraduates. My report is not saying we should move to this, what the report is saying is that I think this should be looked at very carefully because there are both positive features but there are downside and your questioner points to one of them which I think would have to be thought about seriously.

Newshost:
Christine Kirkby, Tynemouth: Where will markers be found to mark in centres full time? I am retired and mark full time for GCSE Eng Lit but can only manage 4-5 hours maximum a day with breaks included to mark 25 scripts. Any more would be impossible to concentrate on fully.

You've conjured up a vision of marking sweatshops.

Mike Tomlinson:
I hope I haven't. My point about professionalism is that at the moment examining is, for many, many teachers and lecturers who do the job, done in their own time outside of a full time job of teaching, which is a very demanding job. In some schools and colleges, they do allow the teachers to mark papers in the non-teaching time, others ban it totally. The training available to examiners and markers, I believe, needs to be of a higher quality and more consistent - and recognised as part of the professional qualifications and development of teachers.

Last year, two boards tried projects using graduates, PGCE graduates in one case who were going to be teaching and they of course are not teaching so they can work in an environment which allows them to get supervision and answers to questions because they don't have the experience of the teacher, so therefore they need more supervision. It's not an either/or - I don't want to create sweatshops. What I'm saying is I think we have to think about the different ways we can solve the challenge of having our papers all marked to high quality on time and taking account of the increasing numbers of papers that do have to be marked.

Newshost:
Judy Rose, UK: Do you think the Government will follow the recommendations in your reports?

Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, was a bit non-committal though wasn't he?

Mike Tomlinson:
He gave very positive responses to all of my immediate and medium-term proposals. My report does say that with the two long-term proposals - the potential splitting off of AS from A2 and the post-qualifications admissions arrangements - in both cases, I said these needed a lot more investigation work beyond the time and capacity of my inquiry and he took those on board as matters which he would look into but did not commit himself. I felt quite comfortable with that. The important thing is that he has agreed to all the short and medium-term proposals which gives me confidence that we will be able to ensure that next year - which is for me the priority above all priorities - students do not have to endure what happened this year.

Newshost:
And is still happening, some people would argue. An e-mail now from Daniel Chowdhury, Hampshire: After being predicted 2As and 2Bs for A Level, I received 2Bs and 2Cs + a further C. I had 4 papers remarked and this failed to increase my grades. After the review process one of my B grades was moved to an A. Then in November, I had a letter from the exam board, OCR, stating that one of my C grades had moved to an A as well outside of that process. Do you know if other people are still having their grades changed because I thought everything was meant to have been finalised?

Mike Tomlinson:
There are two parts to this of course. First of all, any school or college can apply on behalf of a student to have the paper remarked or moderation looked at again - that's always been possible. This year the boards, because of the difficulties, extended the deadlines for that. My consideration was not about marking but about where the grade boundaries had been set. Now that's never been done before and no one can challenge that normally. The review did challenge it in some cases and that resulted in changes to grades.

So the answer to Daniel is that I resolved where the grade boundaries should be and therefore, as I said, nearly 10,000 students got different grades for their units. But equally he and his school or college would also have applied to have their papers remarked - so there were two things happening in parallel.

Newshost:
But marking was a big issue for many people. There was a great cry of disappointment from many when you didn't consider certain aspects of it.

Mike Tomlinson:
There was and I simply say that my remit, given to me by the Secretary of State - Estelle Morris at the time - was simply to look at the grading arguments that had been raised by the teacher bodies and so on.

What I did discover as part of that, was that in certain subjects, the assessment scheme that was used was flawed and this certainly was affecting subjects such as psychology and English Literature and course there was no way of unpicking all of that. All that I could recommend and insist happen was that it was changed for 2003 so that students were not troubled by that.

Newshost:
We've been taking e-mails while we've been on the air. Richard Wells in London asks: I was lucky enough to get 3 As this summer but I watched the story with interest. My feeling is that you raised people's hopes and then gave them nothing.

Not you personally but your remit.

Mike Tomlinson:
Well I think my remit might but I think also the media might have done a little bit towards that. I refused to speculate on how many students would be affected because it's the sort of speculation which is unhelpful to everybody. The media however did choose to speculate and figures of 90,000 were bandied around - I think that was most unfortunate.

Newshost:
The figure of 90,000 affected came from the OCR exam board.

Mike Tomlinson:
Well I said figures were all around but the media made a lot of it. My view always was that there was no way I could know how many students would ultimately be affected. The fact is that at the end of the day, 9,800 of them did have one or more grades changed upwards for units that they'd studied. But of course in themselves that may not lead to an overall A-level grade improvement and as you quite rightly said at the start of your programme, 2,000 or just short of that number. So I do understand his feelings but I was never one who bandied these numbers around.

Newshost:
Simon, UK: I am a current 6th Form pupil taking A-Levels. How can you restore faith in a system that we have seen the failings of first hand?

We touched on this already but are you happy in your mind that students this year can be confident things will be alright?

Mike Tomlinson:
I am as confident as I can be that 2003 is secure. As I explained, the reasons for the failures this year were around a failure to define the standards and have available material which exemplified those standards. A code of practice which allowed certain individuals too much freedom to act without recourse to discussion with anyone else and in some instances the training available to people was not of the right quality or quantity.

Those things have been tackled very much so and are going to be in place by the end of this calendar year, i.e. December. So I'm pretty confident that the system next year is secure and we will not have a repeat of the same problem we had this year. I've also, as I've said already, been asked to look at the system in January and in the summer and I shall be looking very sharply at what happens and reporting very publicly about whether or not I feel the system has been operating in the way it should have been operated.

Newshost:
Simon Barton, St Albans: Can we expect to see any return to A-levels as being a practical means to distinguish the good from the very good?

Mike Tomlinson:
I hope so. The proposal of uncoupling the AS from the A2 would mean in effect that a student could study the AS but not choose to be examined in it but go straight through to the A2 examination, which to some people looks a little like the old A-level.

I think the other thing that needs to be done is we need to make sure that the standard required there is the standard we expect of an A-level. I also said in my report that I want an independent body to keep monitoring that those standards are not being lowered and that they're being maintained. That body should be independent and able to recommend changes if they believe change is necessary. But I do agree with him, we need to have an examination in which the standards are understood and when you get an A you know that that is a well-earned and high ranking qualification.

Newshost:
An e-mail just in from Craig Basham in Enfied, Middlesex: I'm hoping to start teaching training next September. What message do you believe the A-level fiasco is sending out to prospective new teachers and how will you raise the morale of current teachers?

Mike Tomlinson:
What happened this summer is not the fault of any teachers - I'm quite clear about that. The teachers, I think, did a splendid job in the absence of sufficient guidance from the qualifications and curriculum authority. If we can secure 2003, which I believe we can, then I think that will do an awful lot to help to raise confidence. My asking for people to be confident isn't going to be enough. The proof will be next summer without a shadow of a doubt and I shall be working hard in my role throughout the next few months to make sure that we don't repeat that.

I think the material that will be coming out will raise spirits, if not morale, in that it will give teachers a clear hook on which they can hang the discussion with students about standards of work and what it looks like in a written answer because some of the material will be actual answers from students who took the papers this year. So there will be that sort of help. I hope that he does go on to do teacher training - we need as many teachers as we possibly can get. And of course if PGCE graduates then do marking then he can play a significant part as a professional in making that examination system work.

Newshost:
Two e-mails now, one from Sue Barnard, Altringham, UK and Mal in the UK, both saying very much the same thing: Will this happen again? And if it does who's fault will it be?

Mike Tomlinson:
As I said, the two failures where by the QCA to provide sufficiently clear definitions of standards and material and the Government putting in the scheme too quickly and not piloting A2. So in that sense, blame not at individual level but at organisational system level.

That same set of problems cannot and will not occur next year or subsequently. It would a brave man who said however that nothing can go wrong. What we've got to do is ensure that we minimise the risk and manage the risk. I have to say, examining is not an exact science - it's an art in a number of ways, not least because human beings are involved and it's making judgments. But we've got to rely on those human beings as I do but to rely on them we've got to provide them with a framework that is clear and precise that they can work with and they can do their job properly. That is now happening, that's why I believe we can be secure about 2003.

I may have, in 10 months time, to say that something else happened which I could never have predicted - I have to be honest and say that's a possibility. I sincerely hope I don't have to do that.

Newshost:
It's not a science, as you say and looking at your report for instance, the way that marks are converted into grades is bizarre to say the least. Do you think that what happened this summer has in some way lifted a veil and people have regarded with horror what they discovered about the way the system works?

Mike Tomlinson:
I think so yes. I think that if one can talk about any good that's come out of this, I think we have lifted the lid on a process, particularly the grading part of which was pretty much a black box which no one looked at and understood and I think that is good because when you've got things that are transparent and open then you've got a better chance than ever before of making sure that's it's done right.

But you're right about that conversion of raw marks through to grades through something called a UMS score. Some of it is quite counter-intuitive the way that the marks then go - from raw marks to UMS score. And that of course is behind my suggestion of decoupling because you would not need that very complex and very difficult to understand system if you didn't have to aggregate six units across the two years particularly when each of those units is not weighted equally which is an even bigger problem.

Newshost:
While we've been on the air, the viewers to News Online have been telling us what they think about your report and 68% say that they don't think that confidence has been restored - not a scientific poll

Mike Tomlinson:
Well I think if I were voting I would say that publishing a report per se does not restore confidence. So I possibly might be amongst that 68% if I were voting. What I am clear about is that confidence will only come back when people see that the system is operating in the way that it should operate in delivering the grades to students that their work deserves. That will only be seen first and foremost with examinations that are sat in January and then examinations in summer. So what I would say to your 68% of viewers is that I accept your judgment at the moment and no report has ever made things right. Wait until next summer and then if the system has worked as it should work then come back and say what you think about the changes.

Newshost:
Thanks very much for joining us today and for answering the e-mails and thanks to everybody for sending them in and the text messages. I'm sorry we couldn't get through more of them. Goodbye.