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The representatives of the Boards had argued against equal weighting from the outset,
as recalled by a QCA official:
...there were several of us who were arguing that, you know, that the whole
combination - and including the awarding bodies - about how you combine AS
and A2 scores and warning about what was going to happen, and all that kind
of thing. And I know lots ofpeople have come out of the woodwork and said, 'It
was my idea’ and ‘We said it’ and I think in truth there were three or four
groups saying it at the same time: that the way to do it is to separate it. But
then you 're told that this cannot be countenanced by the Minister....
(QCA3 2003)
Those who could foresee the inevitable result of equal weighting tried to explain that
the standard students might be expected to attain at the end of one year of study could
not reasonably be as high as that at the end of two years. Therefore AS level
assessments would have to be set at a lower standard than those of A2. If the two sets
of results were then weighted equally, there was a mathematical certainty of higher
grades - leading to the dreaded accusations of ‘grade inflation’. Their arguments were
to no avail. When Baroness Blackstone replied to Sir William Stubbs on 19 March,
she endorsed the equal weighting in unmistakable terms:
Where the AS represents the first half of the A level, it should contribute 50% of
the marks available for the full A level.
(Blackstone 1999: 1)
It is difficult to understand how two intelligent people, no matter what their advisers
were telling them, could have failed to foresee the inevitable result of this decision. It
was all the more puzzling in view of the opposite approach being taken with regard to
GNVQ assessment. Here, because the individual could select from a variety of
modules to put together a three-unit, a six-unit or a twelve-unit course, it had been
deemed necessary for reasons of rigour to assess all units at the synoptic level - that
is, making no allowance in degree of difficulty for modules taken during the first year
of study. It was again evident to those experienced in assessment that the proposals
were building in a disparity in outcomes between A levels and AVCEs (the new title