U and Pre-U
Sir: I am, as a student approaching the A2 year, sick with envy at the small number of my friends lucky enough to be currently taking the Pre-University course. Not only did John Witheridge (‘An answer to the A-level debate — and Gary Lineker’, 28 August) succinctly describe the previous year of school for me with ‘spoon-fed coursework, punctuating and confusing the learning process with obsessive assessment’, but he also displayed the far more appealing alternative in the Pre-U syllabus. While I continue to attempt to meet the endless, pointless ‘Assessment Objectives’ of A-levels, it appears that Pre-U students enjoy a far more rigorous, yet encouragingly independent, form of learning. At A-level I expected to have the chance to immerse myself in my chosen subjects after the intense boredom of regurgitating set phrases at GCSE. However, I was disappointed that my short period of enjoying these subjects was punctured by AS exams, which were just as uninspiring as the GCSEs.
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