BAS editor Robin Wallis bids farewell to the Hispanists’ friend.
The Pre-U syllabus, first taught in 2008, ends its 15-year run this summer.
“It’ll be missed in Modern Languages, above all else,” one headteacher laments. Those accustomed to the challenge and scope of Pre-U share his regret. “The new A-level is so much more boring – my own students have already said so, quite literally,” one head of department ruefully told us. “So we’ll continue teaching the Pre-U content, adding in A-level exam technique at the end of the course.”
And so the cycle begun in 2008 comes full circle. At that time I enrolled my students for Pre-U because it appeared to offer a continuation of the largely satisfactory pre-2008 A-level syllabus. It seemed to me that the 99.9% of ML departments that in 2008 signed up to the new A-level were the ones making the change, even if they told themselves otherwise. In terms of content, there was more continuity in the Pre-U, but most schools worried at the idea of a qualification not called A-level.
So what did the 2008 change in A-level syllabus entail? For many Modern Languages teachers, it represented a dramatic lowering of expectations about what students could achieve.
For example, the outgoing A-level syllabus had allowed students to choose any topic rooted in the Target Language (TL) culture for their speaking exam presentation and written coursework. By contrast, the new A-level required them to focus on general topics unrelated to the TL culture – infamously, in one sample speaking test, body piercings and tattoos.
The pre-2008 A-level’s 1,500-word coursework assignment, which rewarded analytical skills, was replaced by a sub-section of the writing paper that required a 250-word answer to a general question along the lines of ‘Write about a character in the novel/play/film you have studied’. (The decision to drop coursework was a Qualifications Agency directive to both A-level and Pre-U exam boards.)
Teachers speculated at the time that the change in A-level was an anti-elitist manoeuvre by the authorities that regulate exam boards. The message seemed to be that if students were lucky enough to have teachers with expertise in film/literature/history etc it gave them an unfair advantage. Likewise, if teachers had been privileged enough to spend time in the TL country, the exam content should ensure that their students did not gain an unfair advantage as a result.
The upshot was that the content of ML A-level courses was reduced to ‘social science-lite’, ie teachers and students discussing or writing about (in the target language) their general opinions on issues such as piercings, social media, bicycle lanes… without any specialist understanding of these phenomena. By contrast, Pre-U Spanish students were studying – according to their interests, and those of their teachers – topics such as the Colombian drugs trade, the films of Almodóvar, the Castro regime, Moorish architecture, Goya, etc.
Another attraction of the Pre-U was that, with its relatively small cohorts of candidates (never more than 300 a year in Spanish), the marking was widely seen as more reliable than that of A-level.
Although the original impetus for Pre-U came from academically ambitious schools wanting greater challenge for their students, the Cambridge exam board that took on the project was careful to ensure equivalence between A-level and the new qualification. Pre-U’s richer course content meant that at least 37.5% of the marks were awarded for cultural content, which gave weaker linguists a firmer foothold on the syllabus. The challenge for them was getting the right verb endings and adjective agreements. When it came to learning about, eg, ecotourism in Costa Rica or Spain’s Transition to democracy, the gap between weaker and stronger linguists narrowed. The result was often encouraging results for the ‘weaker’ pupils in their final exams. The most gifted pupils also benefitted from having their prowess more clearly recognised in the 9-tier Pre-U grade scale than was possible in A-level’s 6 tiers.
Herein, perhaps, lay the seeds of Pre-U’s eventual downfall. Cambridge promoted the idea that the D1 grade allowed the very top tier of students to score higher than the highest grade available at A-level. However, university admissions tutors refused to allow students who happened to be at Pre-U schools to use this to their advantage. In admissions terms, the D1 fell flat.
So too did the notion of the ‘Pre-U diploma’, ie three subjects taken at either Pre-U or A-level, ‘sandwiched’ between the Pre-U novelties of an Independent Research Project (IRP) and a ‘Global Perspectives’ qualification. Although the latter caught on at a number of schools, its requirements were quirky, to the extent that, at some centres, it damaged confidence in the wider Pre-U qualification. The IRP likewise looked more convoluted than extended essay options offered at A-level and IB. Nor did it help that Pre-U’s one-year ‘Short Course’ (AS equivalent) in ML was withdrawn after a few years, causing some schools to abandon Pre-U.
Then there was the marketing. During the early years of Pre-U it was common to hear discussion in the news media about the failings of the A-level syllabuses. Such perceptions created, you would think, a perfect opportunity for Cambridge to promote the Pre-U to appeal to a wider audience. Yet barely a peep was heard in the media about Pre-U, and the marketing effort to schools and teachers was far from convincing. (Cambridge’s perceived lack of support for ML teachers was one reason for the creation of this Bulletin, which was partly intended to make up for the shortfall.)
Given this apparent timidity, Pre-U became a target for critics. Journalists questioned its fairness and modus operandi, not least when rogue teacher-examiners at a couple of schools abused their positions. The ensuing scandal forced Cambridge to introduce more involved and costlier security protocols, thus eroding Pre-U’s financial viability.
No doubt these factors weighed heavily when decisions were made about Pre-U’s future and the decision was taken to close it down. The official reason, however, was that the new A-level syllabus coming into force in the 2020s had restored many features of the pre-2008 A-level and Pre-U, such as a linear course with a good range of films and literary texts. With A-levels restored to their former pedigree, the theory went, there was no longer a need for Pre-U.
For ML, there remains a gap between the quality of Pre-U and that of the new A-level. Teachers have highlighted specific shortcomings of the A-level. One head of ML describes the speaking exam as “both prescriptive and vague, with teachers unable to offer any concrete assistance – the worst of both worlds”. Many also regret the abolition of the English-language essay on literature, which encouraged a more penetrating analysis of the texts and was strong preparation for university courses where essays are written in English. Another head of ML remarks that “Pre-U students found the comparative study of two or three works in Paper 4 intellectually motivating – a forerunner of the skills needed in higher education. Sadly, the new A-level lacks this.”
To my mind, Pre-U showed that the more confidence a syllabus places in the students’ capacity to tackle mature themes, the more those students will raise their game. High expectations led to high scores. Schools with a cautious, conservative culture used the excuse that ‘our pupils couldn’t cope with Pre-U’, when they in fact meant ‘our teachers don’t think they’re up to teaching it’. Fortunate the students and teachers who backed themselves to meet the challenge.
Perhaps the most telling endorsement of the Pre-U programme for me was that almost half my Year 13 Pre-U students chose to continue Spanish at university. Pre-U had made Spanish an integral part of their academic maturity and nourishment. We salute its founders. Long may the spirit of Pre-U live on in all who took part in the course.
And good luck to those sitting the last Pre-U exams this summer.
Bulletin of Advanced Spanish 