A-level pass rates reach record high

The pass rate at A-level has risen for the 22nd consecutive year to over 95%, results out tomorrow will show, although the rate of improvement has slowed.

Ministers and the exam boards are braced for the perennial claims of grade inflation because of a rise of about one percentage point in the proportion of A-E grades. The proportion of A grades has also risen slightly.

But the increase - based on provisional figures which are likely to rise even further once all the results have been counted - is smaller than the rise in 2002, the first full year of the new A-level syllabus. A-E grades shot up by 4.5 percentage points then, the fastest increase ever.

Last August the provisional pass rate was 94.3% for grades A-E and 20.7% for grade A. The final, completed rates were 95.4% and 21.5% respectively.

Pass rates have gone up every year since the "cap" was lifted in 1982.

The belief in Whitehall at the exams regulator, the qualifications and curriculum author ity (QCA), and among the examination boards that the marking process has worked much more smoothly this summer cannot disguise their anxiety about the results. About 600,000 A-level results and 1m AS-level results will be issued tomorrow.

Last year the publication of the results passed off reasonably comfortably but controversy followed a few weeks later when head teachers and opposition parties accused the government and the boards of deliberately trying to massage the pass rate downwards.

In the new two-part A-level, students tend to take four subjects at AS-level and drop one of them, taking three on to full A-level. They usually drop their weakest or least favourite subject. This trend took ministers and some exam board officials by surprise last year.

A smaller rate of improvement certainly suits the government, though it insists it has exerted no pressure on the boards or the QCA.

In Scotland the results are mixed. Figures released yesterday by the Scottish qualifications authority showed the pass rate for Advanced Highers rose from 71.7% to 72.6%. Standard grade passes rose from 96.7% to 96.8%. But the pass rate for Highers has fallen for the second year in a row. A total of 69.6% of candidates passed, a drop of 0.1 points on 2002 and 2.3 points on 2001.

The fall was even bigger for Higher English, down to 59.2% from 64.7% last year. Peter Peacock, the Scottish education minister, said changes to the Higher English exam, with more emphasis on external rather than internal assessment, were partly to blame.

He insisted the exam had retained its integrity and pointed to problems experienced last year in the system south of the border.

"Last year in England, when the exam results went up to about a 94% pass rate, nobody had confidence in the results that were then coming through," he said. "Today across Scotland as a whole we have got that degree of consistency in the system, and people can have confidence in the standard."

But nationalists urged the minister to reassure universities and employers that standards were being maintained for the Higher English exam.