MAKING THE GRADES
When he was education secretary, Michael Gove took it upon himself to reform the GCSE exam system. The A* to G grading system was replaced by a numerical one, with the aim of making it easier to differentiate between the top candidates — A* and A grades were, for example, replaced with three grades: 7, 8 and 9. These new exams were supposed to be harder than the previous ones, with former Harrow headmaster Barnaby Lenon commenting that they ‘contain questions of a level of difficulty that we have not seen since the abolition of O-levels in 1987.’ Despite all of this, GCSE results improved this year. The proportion of students achieving the pass mark (previously a C, but now a 4) increased by 0.5 per cent, with the level of boys scoring an A rising by 0.8 per cent to 17.2 per cent. The percentage of A grades in girls stayed constant, at 23.7
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