AS-Levels: This wasted opportunity

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A diet too heavy for students

Confusion and patchwork adoption of A-level reform

The price of pleasing all

Benefits for mature students

The pupil: 'We did see ourselves as guinea pigs'

The pupil: 'It's been very hard work - but it will be worth it'

The teacher: 'A sacrifice of personal breadth'

The new UCAS scorecard

External links

UCAS online

Elspeth Insch is the head teacher of King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls, Birmingham

"The AS exams have been of very variable standard; there is no parity between the exam boards or subjects. The exams have relied on factual recall and haven't allowed high-fliers to develop their knowledge. There has been a dumbing down – they're not much different to GCSEs.

"The girls have had much less free time and our community service programme has been hit. The girls used to do things like help out with reading in local junior schools but there isn't enough time.

"The staff have been under immense pressure too. They were faced with teaching courses they had almost no time to prepare. They got provisional syllabuses with no hard copies late on in the summer term last year and had to prepare the courses during the summer holidays. People are prepared to do some work in the holidays but I think it's expecting too much to ask them to prepare an entire AS course.

"When they started teaching them in September, the syllabuses still hadn't been verified. We didn't get sample exam papers until later in the year and without past papers to look at you couldn't judge what standard was expected.

"The exams in the summer weren't remotely similar to the sample papers we got. It unsettles the kids because it looks like their teachers don't know what they're doing.

"I'm not against more work in the lower sixth. I do believe there should be more evenness of academic effort and I don't believe sixth formers should have a year in which they are dossing about on tax-payers' money. But the fact is they are now shattered and so are the staff. The syllabuses were so full we couldn't give them study leave to prepare – they were learning the syllabus right up to the exams. Because we are worried about the time we have to get through the A2 syllabuses, we had to start teaching the courses after the AS exams when the girls and staff were exhausted.

"We haven't received any of the extra money from our council that we should have had for AS; our councillors decided it should go elsewhere. We have been providing 25 per cent extra courses on the same money so every class has gone up in size by 25 per cent.

"I think AS has made things a little bit broader. I would prefer a system in which sixth formers took five subjects and had to choose from at least two subject areas; the areas could be science, arts/humanities, languages and creative. I would then like to see all five subjects equally weighted in value – no major or minor subjects.

"This was a wonderful opportunity to do something about sixth form studies and it's been a mess. I am heartbroken by it."