**Summary of situation re new A* at A-level - Sept 12**

Figures are for England and have been taken from JCQ statistics. There is an accompanying Excel spreadsheet with all the figures and graphs. These documents and many others relating to “severe grading” are at the ALL London website: http://www.all-london.org.uk/severe_grading.htm

· The serious issue regarding the number of A* awarded in Modern Language subjects especially French has continued and become even more pronounced.

· The intake profile of French has more higher-attaining students (like other subjects such as Maths and Physics), and so they have had a higher percentage of students gaining grade A at A-level (e.g. 38.6% of entries in 2009 [the last pre-A* year] – German 40%, Maths 45%, Physics 32% etc compared with 26.7% for all subjects)

· One would therefore expect to also have a higher than average percentage of students gaining A* in such subjects. However, given the definition of A*, it would seem plausible that the ratio of A* to A*+A students would be similar across a range of subjects

· But this is not the case for French which has 39.4% of students with A or A*, but only 6.8 (7.7% in ’11 and ’10) with A* - this gives a very low ratio of 17% of A* to A+A* (19% in ’11, 20% in ’10)

· The front page of TES on 13th August 2010 had the headline “Exam boards massage A* A-level marks, Ofqual admits” http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6054157; Geoff Lucas (Secretary to HMC) wrote a measured critique of the process of introducing the new A* grade in TES on 20^th August 2010

· The situation in 2012 has deteriorated for ML. The proportion of A* to A+A* is given below:

	2010	2011	2012		2010	2011	2012
Biology	28%	28%	28%	French	20%	19%	17%
Chemistry	27%	27%	26%	German	24%	22%	19%
Mathematics	38%	40%	40%	Spanish	22%	22%	19%
Mathematics (Further)	51%	48%	50%
Physics	31%	32%	26%	All Subjects	30%	30%	30%

· Several universities now require an A* so this issue is increasing in importance.

· There are some very technical issues regarding the process of assigning grade boundaries at A-level using the A/B boundary and the E/U boundary with subsequent interpolation (and now extrapolation for A*) which were raised at the Ofqual inter-subject comparability seminar in Oct’ 08, together with the “2% rule” referred to by Geoff Lucas.