The Cambridge Exam board has created new A-level exams. I left school before the modular system had really taken root, though it was in full swing for science subjects at the time, and certainly before the sixth form was split into two more or less entirely self-contained years with more subjects studied in the first year. The “new” exams therefore seem rather familiar – three subjects studied over two years, with some exams and coursework at the end.
I can only speak from the point of view of arts subjects, and very few people if at all have been through more than one set of A-level exams – I certainly have not. That said, I think this is a sensible move in principle, though I have not yet looked at the details. It certainly took me, and all of my class, two years to learn to write good A-level essays; it was a lot of effort, even with superb teaching, and I certainly would not have welcomed or found helpful exams at the end of my first year. I am sure that it would have been more difficult to reach the standard required had our summer term been more or less filled with yet another set of public exams, so soon after GCSE. I should say that I found the “traditional” A-levels I did, with their emphasis on writing essays under timed conditions on titles not seen before the exam to be invaluable training for university – not because that is what university was largely about, nor even because the Final exams took a similar format, but rather because in being forced to be able to write in a short time an answer to a question I had not seen before, I learnt how to marshal my thoughts and present them in a logical fashion. It was certainly not a skill I had learnt during my GCSEs, and it was one which time and good, traditional teaching would give me – not one I could have learnt by doing endless exams.