A-levels should be scrapped and replaced by a US-style university admissions system, the vice chancellor of the University of Birmingham has said.
Professor Sir David Eastwood called for admissions to be separated from sixth form teaching in a “Red Box” article in The Times.
In the piece, he said a well-conceived standardised assessment test (SAT) would measure students’ academic potential without forcing them to be “lavishly prepared or crammed”.
Alongside the SATs, the sixth form curriculum would be overhauled with students studying for a diploma based on a much wider curriculum, assessed in a variety of ways.
“Pupil understanding would be greater, their range of skills and competence richer, and teachers would be empowered,” he wrote.
“Pupils’ subject understanding could be complemented as they simultaneously develop other skills. We would have a system which retained the depth that distinguishes A-levels with the breadth whose absence many employers and universities have bemoaned.”
UCAS recently set out its own proposals for reforming the admissions system last November.
