Education Quandary: Why do we have lots of national examinations, at GCSE and A-level, when no other country in Europe does?

Hilary's advice

This reader's young teenagers are angry at having been brought home from living abroad to what they see as years of exam hell, and as someone who struggled to settle her own children back into the English school system at around the same age, I have sympathy. Most developed countries go for either school-based assessment, or some type of baccalaureate at 18, so why do we have two rounds of national exams in the space of three years? No reason at all, other than the vagaries of history, although it looks unlikely it will stay this way for all that much longer as the current exam consensus is quickly breaking down.

At the 18-year-old stage, things are splintering into A-levels, the International Baccalaureate, Pre-U exams and the new range of vocational and academic diplomas. At the 16-year-old level, some schools are taking up the International GCSE, or the middle-years qualification of the International Baccalaureate.

But do we need an exam at 16 at all? GCSEs were designed as school-leaving exams but children in Year Seven or below will now have to stay in education or training until they are 17, and may find themselves following very different education and training paths. Why then put pupils through the misery of a national exam at 16? The answer may be because we will be unable to agree on a system to replace it with, but that is obviously a very poor response indeed.

Readers' advice

Your reader is incorrect. In the Irish Republic, students sit their Junior Certificate at 15 and Leaving Cert at 17 or 18. Both Junior and Leaving are national exams. The vast majority of youngsters in Ireland stay on until 18. My experience of teaching in the Irish system showed me students and families with a much higher regard for education than we have in England, with both Junior and Leaving Cert taken very seriously indeed and with no sense that students are hard done by. The point of our system is that when society sees 16 as the school-leaving age – as ours does – it's essential that we have a nationally recognised qualification on which employers and colleges can base judgements and offers.

Lorna Gale, Solihull

These exams are for the universities and the Government. Universities have always demanded that schools deliver students who already have a good grounding in what they plan to study, hence A-levels. GSCEs are there for league-table purposes now. All my students know that a poor mark at GCSE is worthless and most of my lower achievers don't even bother to try.

Shaun Walsh, London E17

The Government pays lip-service to personalised learning, but still expects students of all abilities to take the same exams. My belief is that external secondary-level exams should be scrapped, just as we are now getting rid of SATs, and that every secondary school pupil should leave school with an individual portfolio of achievements.

Anne Wynter, Sheffield