Head calls on A-level students to show creativity

Students need to be able to show their "originality and creativity" in A-level exams, a leading headmistress warned today.

Pupils now have access to online model answers, marking schemes and other information, which has taken the "mystique" out of what markers are looking for, according to Cynthia Hall, headmistress of Wycombe Abbey.

The girls' boarding school in Buckinghamshire has topped an A-level league table of private schools for the third year in a row.

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More than 50 per cent of the school's exam entries were awarded one of the new A* grades, and the girls notched up 247 A*-A grades between them.

Mrs Hall insisted A-levels were a good qualification and proved the work done by a student.

But she said: "There's so much available now about what a student is able to do to score the marks."

If you have effective students with well-qualified teachers, there should be "very little excuse, you ought to be able to get good grades", Mrs Hall said.

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She added: "There's nothing wrong with demonstrating that a student has studied and done a good job of work. The problem is that we need to have ways of demonstrating originality and creativity. I don't think that's something that's available, it does not provide that."

Students know the kinds of questions they are likely to be asked, and whereas in the past there was a "mystique" about what examiners were looking for, now students can look online for model answers.

Ten years ago, students thought they would have to be "brilliant and inventive and ready for anything", Mrs Hall said.

Mrs Hall also warned that the Government must be careful with plans to reform A-levels.

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Education Secretary Michael Gove has indicated he wants to scrap AS-levels, which are usually taken in the first year of sixth-form.

He said he wanted fewer modules and more exams at the end of two-year A-level courses to "revive the art of deep thought".

But Mrs Hall said: "I watch students who have been a little bit lazy, or more focused than they should have been on sport or something than taking exams.

"The fact they can re-take, and get perhaps higher marks, perhaps means they then learn from their mistakes."

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But she added that students should be wary of re-taking lots of AS-level courses as it could impact on their A-level studies.

Changes to A-levels mean that a new A* grade was introduced for the first time this year. Pupils also sat four modules instead of six and answered "stretch and challenge" questions designed to allow them to show their knowledge.

Mrs Hall said she was "very pleased" with this year's results, and the new A* grade had allowed them to distinguish between students.

She said the school planned to stick with A-levels for the time being, but was looking at other qualifications, such as the Cambridge Pre-U, in other schools.

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Around 23 schools took the new Cambridge Pre-U qualifications this year, according to data used to create today's tables, and a further 43 took the International Baccalaureate (IB). These qualifications were taken either alone, or alongside A-levels.

Headmistress Barbara Stanley of the Abbey School, a girls' day school in Reading, said the IB had been offered as an alternative to A-levels to give pupils a choice, adding: "The IB is a world-recognised qualification that isn't being politically interfered with like A-levels, which have been a political football for a long time."

Mrs Stanley said some girls were slightly wary of taking the IB as they were the first at the school to do so, and had grown up to think they should do A-levels after GCSEs.

But the IB "has opened up a world to them that they wouldn't otherwise have had".

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One pupil scored a maximum 45 points in her IB, one of only 72 students out of 49,000 worldwide to do so.

How Yorkshire pupils fared

Combined A– and AS–level UCAS score per candidate

East Yorkshire

Hymers College – 391

Pocklington School – 350

Hull Collegiate School – 277

West Yorkshire

Bradford Grammar School – 418

Bradford Girls' Grammar School – 380

Wakefield Girls' High School – 378

Queen Elizabeth Grammar – 371

The Grammar School at Leeds – 366

Gateways School – 356

Fulneck School – 316

Woodhouse Grove School – 316

Ackworth School – 315

Batley Grammar School – 312

Silcoates School – 305

North Yorkshire

Queen Margaret's School – 426

Harrogate Ladies' College – 412

Bootham School – 412

The Mount School York – 402

St Peter's School – 393

Ampleforth College – 383

Queen Ethelburga's College – 379

Ashville College – 346

Read School – 211

South Yorkshire

Birkdale School – 373

Sheffield High School GDST – 365

Results for the International Baccalaureate and the Cambridge Pre-U are not included.

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