A Levels....Are they nearing the end?

I dont think they're, is this regarding the "easyness" of A-levels, my response to this is that some A-levels may have a fluctuation of how difficult they are regarded year to year, however for other subjects.. i think the matter is purely that students studying A-levels are becoming more intelligent year after year?

Okay, this thread may seem ridiculous to most people and I'm assuming the vast majority will be laughing because I'm even suggesting this for debate, but after looking at things I thought that there might be room for debate here.

So this is what I was thinking. After looking at recent statistics of A level results, it seems that the number of people have been getting A's have increased over the years (BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11012369)

See this chart:

As you can see there's been an increase and now in England alone 8.1% of all A level entries of have been awarded A*'s, and 97.6% passing with grade E or above in England, Wales & NI.

This leaves me to the first question: Are A levels simply getting easier? or with more resources available to us compared to 20 years ago it allows us to get better results?

The second thing I've noticed is the rise of university entries. This has increased from 2009 and with around 150,000 people looking to miss out on university places (Quote: BBC Again, Independent, i-student advisor), it looks like competition is increasing, and will continue to increase for UCAS in 2011. I failed getting in this year, but due to the lack of clearing opportunities I opted to re-apply for 2011. This may prove to come out worse than 2010 but I'm willing to take the risk.

But moving on, I've also noticed something else when I was looking through UCAS and university websites: the entry requirements. Last year when A* was introduced, I noticed several universities (notably Cambridge and Imperial) raised courses from AAA to A*AA. Although Oxford didn't do that and still haven't done it according to their website, it just shows the standards are getting higher. Is this linked to the increased competition and the thought of A levels getting easier?

This is also backed up from several universities, although my research maybe flawed. When re-applying this year, I've seen the entry requirements go up from last year by a grade. For example, King's College London and Birmingham has gone from ABB-AAC to AAB, Newcastle going up from ABC to AAC-ABB. NOTE: This is only for Computer Science, it may differ elsewhere. This also leads me asking same question.

So if we are going to see this trend of entry requirement grades being increased as years go by, will we get to a situation where getting A-A*'s at A levels become too common that all universities in UK will ask for A*AA or even A*A*A*. Surely, that isn't possible? But if it continues going this way, something needs to be done. Maybe a restructure of the A level? Maybe look to alternatives? If we look and prioritise alternatives, could we see the end of the A Levels as they become something that was worthless? Years ago, it used to be respectable just to pass and nowadays it seems a necessity to pass with a high grade to get into university.

But what are the alternatives? IB-Diploma? By the looks of it seems harder than A levels as you need to cover more subjects. But surely, that singles out people who can cover a broad about of knowledge over different area of subjects. Yes, you need more GCSE's to get to take IB, but is this really comparable to the A levels, or does it give a completely different type of education, much more similar to the French system? The second alternative that some people may not be aware of, the Pre-U examinations. The exam board responsible for these, CIE (Uni. Cambridge International Examinations) makes it look like a like-for-like alternative for A levels, with the exception that it is harder. It is meant to be like a diploma like qualification, but the choices of subjects make it look and seem similar to A level. The top grade at Pre-U, D1 extends further than A* in the UCAS tariff, so it looks like it's considered more valued than A levels already. Some private schools are already replacing some A levels with Pre-U's already. Is this just the first step and can we see Pre-U's displacing the A levels completely from education in the distant future? If so, are the GCSE's too easy and do they also need to be changed to cover the gap between secondary to further education?

Sorry for the amount of questions asked in this thread, and also really sorry for the long read, but I thought that maybe this has some room to discuss? Right? I'll find out in the next few hours I guess.

correction both the D1 AND D2 grades are higher than A Level A*. The D2 is value by ucas as having a tariff of 145 vs A*s 140.

As for your question, it would interest you to know that Ofqual are actually doing a review of both the GCSE and A Level ssystems comparing them to the IGCSE, the IB and the Cambridge Pre-U Diploma:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11110535

Personally I think that A Levels should be replaced with the Pre-U. The Pre-U was developed specifically to meet the demand placed by Universities for a qualification that covers more depth and allows for more free thinking than the current, rigid, wholly exams based system of the A Level.

The current system is ridiculous in my opinion. Exam boards and their suffocating syllabuses (syllabi?) and stupid mark schemes that penalise correct answers for not jumping through certain hoops, or that simply demand rote memorisation of previous mark schemes. Exams don't test subject proficiency as much as they test 'exam proficiency' and I think that's a problem because exam proficiency is quite easy to learn, especially with mark schemes, past papers, exam-tailored revision notes, etc. at your fingertips these days. It'd be much better (and more challenging) if teachers were free to set the limits, explore different topics of their own choice, and that examiners dropped the robotic act and responded with some flexibility to the many different (correct) ways to approach a question. Obviously there would have to be some guidelines to bring all A level students up to roughly the same standard but that can be done without homogenising them into exam-savvy knowledge-clones of each other.

It's all too much of a conveyer-belt system looking for the most efficient way to shove another 'batch' up to the next level. That's why more people are getting As I think.