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made on sifting carefully the evidence, because ...everybody’s moving from one
meeting to the next so quickly that nobody actually reflects on very much at all.
I mean, there were several of us, including the awarding bodies, who were
arguing...about how you combine AS and A2 scores and warning about what
was going to happen.
But then you’re told that this cannot be countenanced by the Minister, who
probably hasn’t said a thing about it at that point. You know, that whole
‘Minister is minded’ sort of mind-reading bit which is deeply frustrating
because ministers are often much more flexible than the people who are
protecting them.
(QCA3 2004)
This perception that ministers are in some way at the mercy of their civil servants has
a long history and some reliable data, as well as television’s Sir Humphrey, to support
it. However there may be a decision-making network that is more complex than
appears on the surface. This was certainly the case in the central issue in the dispute
over grades in September 2002.
This was the critical matter of the combination of AS∕A2 scores to produce a final
grade. The source of the problem was a combination of semantic and mathematical
misunderstandings. In their research into the early stages of Curriculum 2000,
Hodgson and Spours reported that Lord Dearing, in confirming that the new AS
proposed in his 1996 Report would form a constituent sub-set of the full A-Ievel
course as well as a self-standing qualification in its own right, also:
...confirmed that the weighting for the AS, in terms of the total A level grade,
would be 40 per cent and 60 per cent for the rest of the A level (later to become
known as A2), because the former was intellectually less demanding than the
latter. At the same time, however, he argued that in terms of UCAS points,
performance tables and national targets, the AS should count as 50 [per cent of
an A level] because it was covering half the content and half of the time of a full
A level. The reason for the allocation of 50 per cent UCAS points was to
incentivize the take-up of the AS for broadening purposes.
(Hodgson 2003: 83)
Dearing’s entirely sensible differentiation between the 40/60 weighting of AS∕A in
producing a final overall grade as distinct from the allocation of 50% of UCAS points
for each award proved too complex for general consumption. Following the 1998