Getting into Varsity: Comparability, Convergence and Congruence ...

been able to enter directly from school. ‘Aptitude’ in the U.K. context must encompass subject knowledge and study skills to the extent that they are essential for the course an applicant wishes to study. No matter how much potential a student may appear to have, it will be impossible to bridge, within the first year of a degree course, an excessive gap between the skills and knowledge they have and those they require.

An interim report on the aforementioned ‘UK SAT’ pilot (Kirkup, Wheater, Schagen, Morrison & Whetton, 2008) has suggested that the SAT favours white boys who have attended Grammar School. The same study reported some evidence that the SAT could help differentiate between able pupils either at the GCSE or at Advanced Level but that the utility of the SAT may differ according to the subjects studied at Advanced Level or in higher education. The final report in 2010 will follow the collection of degree outcomes from the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which will be used to assess the predictive validity of the SAT relative to A-Level outcomes. Previously, similar studies have found that A-Levels predict undergraduate and postgraduate performance better than do aptitude tests and that the combined predictive power of curriculum-based assessments, including A-Levels, and an aptitude test is little greater than the curriculum-based assessment alone.

Returning to the issue of the secondary-tertiary curricular alignment, and related to concerns about discriminating between applicants when around a quarter of all A-Level entries are awarded a grade A, concerns have been expressed that A-Level syllabi and examinations are not as challenging as they used to be. Debates will always take place about the depth versus the breadth of subject coverage and changes in emphasis on the knowledge and skills that are valued in a discipline. However, in relation to university admissions, the pertinent issue is whether the transition from further education to higher education is a satisfactorily smooth one. It is not uncommon for higher education professionals to voice concerns about the standards of Advanced Levels and how ill-prepared some of their undergraduate students are for the first year of their degree course. For example, in a recent article in Times Higher Education, a university Professor expressed concern about A-Level Physics syllabi, noting the