Leading Article: The facts of life

Schools and sixth-form colleges are doing students a grave disservice by not telling them which A-level subjects are taken seriously by the best universities and which not. Young people need to understand the consequences of opting for subjects like film studies and media studies.

They may find these topics superficially more alluring than history or Latin but when they realise that the "soft" subjects may limit their choice of university, they are willing to change tack. Top universities may be wrong in discriminating against the soft subjects, but students have to negotiate the world as they find it – and schools need to recognise that.