Dropout fear over exam chaos

As exam chaos hits students this summer, headteachers warn it could lead to an increase in sixth-form dropouts.

They said 16-year-olds who had been persuaded to stay on were already missing classes because of the burden of AS-level exams in the first year of their sixth form. Some would drop out of education altogether, they predicted, forced out by reforms whose very purpose was to ensure more stayed on and broadened their studies.

Sixth-form dropouts will jeopardise the Government's ambitious target to increase the proportion of young people entering higher education, particularly those from less well-off families.

Today's warning, sounded at the National Association of Head Teachers' conference in Torquay, comes after the disclosure that sixth-formers are having another nightmare summer, despite Government attempts to rectify last year's AS-level "shambles".

Students are sitting up to five separate exams in a day, under a new timetable that has lowered the number of subject clashes but put greater pressure on teenagers by cramming more exams together.

The AS-levels were introduced to give them the opportunity to study four or even five subjects in the first year of the sixth form, before going on to complete three subjects at A-level.

But exams at age 17 give students who have just completed their GCSEs little more than two terms before they are assessed at A-level standard.

Some start exams as early as January.

Clarissa Williams, head of Tolworth Girls' School in Surrey, said: "I think students will be dropping out because of the pressure. We have already seen youngsters who are not turning up regularly to classes.

"There is a real danger of disillusionment setting in, of youngsters saying to themselves that this is not what staying on in education was supposed to be like."

The pressure of study and exams left little time for other activities that previously made the sixth form attractive, like sports, community projects and the Duke of Edinburgh's award scheme, she added.

Terry Creissen, head of Colne College near Colchester, said: "The policy to try to expand the curriculum for sixth-formers has been the right one. But the process has ended up cramming students through exams and crowding out a lot of what they should be in school for."

Some students were "dumbing down" their subject choices, he added.

"But a lot will drop out after the first year, because of the pressure. Last year, teachers and students made allowances because everyone expected there would be teething troubles. But it has been just as bad this year and people will not forgive them a second time."

? Heads at the NAHT conference are also due to propose that children whose first language is not English should be allowed to take national tests in their own languages. This would enable pupils who had only recently arrived in the UK to demonstrate their abilities.

Opinion: AS levels aren't working