One of the world's top universities is to trial its own entrance exam because A-level "grade inflation" has made it impossible to tell one straight-A candidate from another.
Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial, announced the move as he called for extreme action to "save" bright children from underperforming state schools.
He wantsgovernment money used to pay for them to go private.
Sir Richard said it was "frightening" that 40% of students at Imperial - recently ranked fifth in a global university league table - came from private schools, which teach just 7% of all pupils in the UK.
Speaking at the Independent Schools Council's annual conference in London, he said "grade inflation" had "destroyed" the role of A-levels in selecting undergraduates.
"Top institutions have great difficulty separating out the best students," he said. "Even if you interview all the students you still have a problem."
The university is trialling a new entrance exam for all students taking subjects other than medicine, where a separate test exists.
He said: "We are doing this not because we don't believe in A-level but we cannot use A-levels any more as a discriminatory factor.
"They have all got four or five A-levels."
The new exam will assess candidates' general intelligence and creativity and could be brought in from 2010, with other top universities said to be keen to follow Imperial's lead.
But Sir Richard warned the brightest children still stood a far better chance of getting into top universities if they were educated privately.
"We have got to do something radical if we are going to save children in 93% of our schools that somehow are just not getting the education they deserve," he said.
"We have in this country some of the best secondary education in the world but only a few percentage of people benefiting from it.
"Why don't we make it available to those kids who are really going to benefit.
"If the Government have got some sense they would allow that to happen. Just as we used to run scholarship schemes in the past, why don't we do that today for those bright kids?"
However, Schools Minister Lord Adonis insisted that educational standards were being maintained.
"The rise in numbers achieving higher grades is due to the increasing success of schools and should be celebrated," he said.
"To further underpin the quality of the qualifications system we have established the new independent regulator, Ofqual."
NEWS BY:http://news.sky.com
Sir Richard Sykes, Rector of Imperial, announced the move as he called for extreme action to "save" bright children from underperforming state schools.
He wantsgovernment money used to pay for them to go private.
Sir Richard said it was "frightening" that 40% of students at Imperial - recently ranked fifth in a global university league table - came from private schools, which teach just 7% of all pupils in the UK.
Speaking at the Independent Schools Council's annual conference in London, he said "grade inflation" had "destroyed" the role of A-levels in selecting undergraduates.
"Top institutions have great difficulty separating out the best students," he said. "Even if you interview all the students you still have a problem."
The university is trialling a new entrance exam for all students taking subjects other than medicine, where a separate test exists.
He said: "We are doing this not because we don't believe in A-level but we cannot use A-levels any more as a discriminatory factor.
"They have all got four or five A-levels."
The new exam will assess candidates' general intelligence and creativity and could be brought in from 2010, with other top universities said to be keen to follow Imperial's lead.
But Sir Richard warned the brightest children still stood a far better chance of getting into top universities if they were educated privately.
"We have got to do something radical if we are going to save children in 93% of our schools that somehow are just not getting the education they deserve," he said.
"We have in this country some of the best secondary education in the world but only a few percentage of people benefiting from it.
"Why don't we make it available to those kids who are really going to benefit.
"If the Government have got some sense they would allow that to happen. Just as we used to run scholarship schemes in the past, why don't we do that today for those bright kids?"
However, Schools Minister Lord Adonis insisted that educational standards were being maintained.
"The rise in numbers achieving higher grades is due to the increasing success of schools and should be celebrated," he said.
"To further underpin the quality of the qualifications system we have established the new independent regulator, Ofqual."
NEWS BY:http://news.sky.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment