WITH the abolition of private schools now gaining increased support, there is yet another aspect of their provision which needs closer examination.

Some of the press have taken notice of the fact that most schools in the independent sector have chosen to ignore the newly reformed GCSE examinations, preferring, for obvious reasons, IGCSE examinations, for their already highly privileged pupils. What is being ignored, however, is that A-Level examinations, the accepted route into higher education for nearly all state school students, are also being avoided.

Three Freedom of Information (FoI) requests have revealed that, whilst there is much less regulation involved, pupils entering the examinations preferred by private schools have almost three times as much chance of getting A*/A grades than from A-Level entry.