Blair adviser condemns A-levels

A-level grades are an unreliable guide to a student's ability, says a report co-written by the architect of the national curriculum testing regime, published today.

Up to 300,000 students are due to receive their A-level results tomorrow, but the report concludes that the grades "cannot be taken at face value". It says university admissions tutors should conduct their own assessment of a student's ability.

Its authors – Professor Paul Black and Professor Dylan Wiliam – are prominent academics at King's College London. Professor Black headed the government task force that produced the original design for national curriculum testing and assessment.

Their report comes at a time of heated debate over the future of A-levels, with calls for them to be replaced by a European-style baccalaureate system.

Tomorrow's results are expected to show the first significant drop in many years in the overall number of A-level entries – 5 per cent. This is because thousands of youngsters doing AS-levels – where there has been a 25 per cent rise in the number of candidates – are dropping subjects they do badly in.

Today's report warns that there are too many variables to make A-level grades reliable. These include how students feel on the day of the exam, which examiner marked the paper and which part of the syllabus the student was questioned on. Professor Wiliam says research at King's College showed only one in three students with the best grades on entry went on to join the highest performers at university.

The report describes the annual debate over whether exam standards are going up or down as "futile and empty". Instead, it argues, attention should concentrate on the reliability and validity of the results. It concludes: "Those who use examination results to draw conclusions about individual students, or the performance of schools, should understand that examination results are of limited reliability and validity and that they cannot be taken at face value."

The authors believe university admissions tutors should look beyond A-level grades to find the talents of individual students. They should conduct their own assessments of their ability or pay closer attention to their day-to-day school work. Professor Black says: "Too much confidence has been placed in the results of external testing and too little in the potential value of school-based assessments." Professor Wiliam adds: "Whether standards are going up or down is not the issue – standards have been broadly maintained. The problem is we just don't know how accurate examination grades are for individual students."