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Today will be a happy one for millions of school-leavers, celebrating success in their A-levels. All will have struggled heroically to overcome the adverse conditions of the pandemic,

especially those whose schools and families have the least. To them, the fact that almost half of all grades are expected to be A or A* will feel no more than they deserve. That view will be

reinforced be a self-congratulatory chorus from the teachers who marked their work, the experts who improvised the system and the ministers who will take credit for their record-beating

results. And yet all this mutual backslapping is intended to disguise the devaluation of the qualification that used to be known as the “gold standard” of secondary education. In the past

two years, during which the traditional method of assessment has been abandoned due to Covid, we have witnessed the sharpest rise in grade inflation in history. Indeed, if grades were a

currency, economists would by now be sounding the alert for hyperinflation.  Throughout the postwar period, the proportion of A-level examinations that were awarded A, the highest grade, was

held consistently below 10 per cent.  This worked as long as university remained the preserve of an academic elite. In 1975, the year I sat the exam, we were among only just over 12 per

cent of 17- and 18-year-olds who passed two or more A-levels.  As many more students from each cohort entered higher education, however, a new orthodoxy gained ground, which held that

candidates should be marked according to — supposedly strict — criteria, which might vary from year to year. The effect of this shift was grade inflation, at first gradual, which enabled a

growing number of students to gain entry to the rapidly expanding higher education sector. The only period that witnessed inflation remotely comparable to the present was that of the Labour

governments from 1997-2010. By 2009, with the proportion of A grades rising above 25 per cent, alarm bells were ringing and a new grade was introduced, the A*, to enable the elite

universities to distinguish between the fairly bright and the best. Under the Conservative Education Secretary Michael Gove, a more rigorous approach to exam regulation stabilised the

situation and grade inflation ceased. But the pause proved to be merely temporary. During the two years that Gavin Williamson has been Education Secretary, students have in effect been

gifted a whole extra grade. This year about 19 per cent of A-levels have been graded A* and about 26 per cent will be A — a total of almost 45 per cent. Last year, which was by far the

highest ever, that figure was 38.6 per cent. In 2019, the equivalent figure was 25.5 per cent. So in just two years, the country will have moved from awarding a quarter of A-levels the two

highest grades to as many as half of all students.  This cannot go on without devaluing the qualification entirely. The experiment of trusting teachers to mark their pupils objectively has

been a predictable disaster. Ofqual, the regulator, has been unable to prevent schools from rewarding their students and staff with the qualifications they “deserve”, regardless of the fine

distinctions that render them useful to universities or employers. We should expect a return to interviews and other filters that will inevitably favour the schools with the resources to

train their students to overcome such barriers. No wonder some experts are predicting that social mobility will go into reverse. Next year, when exam boards are restored to their traditional

role of assessment, there will be irresistible pressure to treat the 2022 cohort at least as generously as the 2021 one. Grade inflation is a ratchet: reversing it is impossible in

practice. Grade inflation, provided it is gradual, is popular with most parents and hence also with most politicians. Grade deflation would be so unpopular that no Government would

contemplate it — let alone in the year before a possible general election. Nevertheless, this Government was elected to “level-up” the country. A recent poll showed that about a third of

voters still have no idea what the slogan is supposed to mean. What it certainly ought not to mean is debauching the currency of academic excellence. A-levels may no longer be the gold

standard, but they must not be reduced to worthless paper. Boris Johnson needs to act decisively to restore confidence in the public examination system. He could start by appointing an

Education Secretary who actually believes in that system and could be trusted to be its custodian.  It may even be time to reconsider the purpose of A-levels. Not all of the institutions

that require them seem overly concerned about academic standards. For those that do, perhaps a new qualification is needed, parallel and supplementary to the A-level course. Such a

qualification used to exist: the S-level (originally “Scholarship level”). It was replaced about 20 years ago by the Advanced Extension Award (AEA), but were phased out after the A* grade

was introduced. The AEA is now offered only in Mathematics and by just one exam board, Edexel.  The Government should seriously consider relaunching the AEA across a wider range of subjects,

perhaps under its original name of S-level. The word “scholarship” has acquired negative connotations in the education establishment, but among the public it is still greatly valued. Young

people should be encouraged to admire and, if they have the aptitude, to aspire to be scholars. An A-level examination in which half of all candidates get top marks makes a mockery of

scholarship. The pandemic has left the transition from school to higher education and the workplace in chaos. Who better than a Prime Minister with both scholarships and books to his name to

initiate a national conversation about how we should reform that transition? A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an

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