Westminster hasn’t made life easy if you are a 16-year-old. Michael Gove’s education reforms are well underway but the reorganisation of A-level courses is yet to be implemented. Everything about A-levels is changing.
Until recently, you took an AS, then an A2, counting as two halves of an A-level qualification. However, under Gove’s reforms, these are being uncoupled to create new linear courses, with one exam taken at the end. This change is being phased in over the course of three years so I find myself in an awkward limbo period with only seven of the 23 subjects offered at my school due to become linear in 2015.
With the three sciences and history among those becoming linear but languages and maths among those remaining non-linear, most students will find themselves taking some combination of the two. This makes the question of how many A-levels to take in the first year of Sixth Form difficult to generalise when some subjects cannot be dropped.
Many students are afraid of these demanding courses and difficult exams.
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