Encouraging results for education reform

By Telegraph View. The drop in A-level grades indicates that Michael Gove's reforms are having an effect.
The announcement of A-level results is a time-honoured summer ritual, with households around the country gathering in trepidation and then, ideally, exhilaration. Yet this year, there is a different flavour to events. As in 2012, grades are doing something decidedly untraditional: namely, going down.
This is not a fact to be lamented. No one seriously disputes that the exam system fell victim to rampant grade inflation: how else to explain the threefold rise in the proportion of A grades since the mid-Eighties? That this trend is now going into reverse is a tribute to the Coalition’s efforts, with the watchdog Ofqual and the exam boards given the clearest indication by Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, that he wants to restore rigour and integrity to the system. More...