A complete re-examination of our A-level system is needed

Estelle Morris, the Secretary of State for Education, was indubitably right when she told the BBC's World At One yesterday: "It is no good going to school, quite frankly, for all those years and working hard, if you don't have confidence that you will be fairly assessed." That was the state of affairs yesterday morning; by the afternoon, the minister had made good on her worries and ordered that all the A-level papers implicated in the marking-down controversy be remarked.

Such an unprecedented state of affairs could be solved only by drastic action on this scale. However, that should not stop us questioning how the complaints from prominent independent-school headteachers were dealt with. We are still awaiting the outcome of an investigation by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), the Government's exams watchdog.

The QCA report will land on Ms Morris's desk on Friday. However, will we – or the headteachers or the pupils – be comforted if it concludes that nothing untoward happened? For the QCA also validates GCSE and A-level courses and is one of the bodies that the headteachers are complaining about. They allege that it brought pressure on examiners to reduce the number of A grades. Only an independent inquiry coming to that conclusion after assessing all the evidence would give us the confidence we require.

The Oxford and Cambridge and RSA exam board – the one at the centre of the allegations – insists nothing untoward has happened. It says the new examination system – under which AS-levels are taken at the end of the first year of the sixth form and A2s in the second – has led to a different system of marking; AS-levels are supposed to be easier than A-levels and, in order to compensate for that and to ensure the standard of the overall exam is the same as in previous years, grade boundaries for A2 work have been raised. This is a logical explanation, but one that we would find easier to accept if it were the conclusion of an independent inquiry.

State-school headteachers' organisations, such as the Secondary Heads Organisation – and let us not forget that their pupils are caught up in this controversy just as much as those of the independent sector – have been arguing for some time for a body along the lines of Ofsted, the Government's education standards watchdog, or some sort of ombudsman to look into complaints about exam marking. Indeed, Ofsted had the role of inspecting exam standards several years ago. Now could be the time to renew that part of its remit to ensure more objectivity.

While the subject of A-levels is under the microscope, this controversy has also revealed another shortcoming in our exam system. Presumably, if A2s had not been made more demanding, there would have been a plethora of A grades this year. (Even without this latest hiccup, there were more A grades awarded than last year.) Universities say that they find it difficult to single out the brightest candidates because of the large numbers that come with A grades.

In the past, there was a system in which only a fixed percentage of examinees would be awarded an A grade. This ensured that only the best students got the best results. The Government is wrestling with ways of trying to sort out the universities' dilemma of choosing from so many qualified students. One option is introducing an A grade with distinction to help to sort out the brightest candidates. Turning the clock back may not be the worst option.