Three-fold rise in schools offering alternative GCSE exam

The number of schools rejecting GCSEs in favour of alternative exams modelled on the old O-level has more than tripled in just three years, the Telegraph has learnt.

Record numbers of pupils will sit the International GCSE this year.

Almost 2,700 secondary schools now offer the International GCSE – originally established for children overseas – amid fears over falling standards in mainstream qualifications.

It is believed that around six-in-10 state and private schools across the UK are teaching the course in at least one subject.

Learning languages is a foreign concept to today’s youngsters

By not taking A-levels in French and German, pupils are missing out on one of life’s great pleasures

The number of pupils taking A-levels in French and German has plummeted to a record low

Yesterday’s shock-horror report that the young, faced with options of all kinds, are shying away from foreign languages is sad but unsurprising.

Figures show that the number of pupils taking A-levels in French and German has fallen to a record low – there has been almost a 50 per cent decline over the last decade – and interest even in Mandarin and Arabic has dropped.

Toughening up of GCSEs puts 200 schools at closure risk

At least 200 secondary schools are at risk of closure after falling below minimum GCSE targets amid a toughening up of exams for 16-year-olds.

More schools could be at risk of closure because of a toughening up of GCSEs.

Figures to be published next week are likely to show a decline in the number of pupils given good grades in tests for the second year running.

In 2012, some 69.4 per cent of GCSE papers were graded A* to C compared with 69.8 per cent a year earlier. It was the first drop in the qualification’s 25-year history.

Private schools attack 'crude' university access targets

Top universities are discriminating against private school pupils by engineering admissions in favour of teenagers from the state system, according to the head of Britain’s biggest independent schools group.

Barnaby Lenon, head of the ISC, has criticised the use of admissions targets by universities such as Cambridge.

Institutions are attempting to drive down recruitment from the fee-paying sector to satisfy Government demands for a more socially-balanced student body, it is claimed.

Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said the creation of specific targets that discriminate between state and private school pupils were “wrong” and actually risked favouring affluent children from “middle-class comprehensives”.

Private schools attack 'crude' university access targets

Top universities are discriminating against private school pupils by engineering admissions in favour of teenagers from the state system, according to the head of Britain’s biggest independent schools group.

Barnaby Lenon, head of the ISC, has criticised the use of admissions targets by universities such as Cambridge.

Institutions are attempting to drive down recruitment from the fee-paying sector to satisfy Government demands for a more socially-balanced student body, it is claimed.

Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said the creation of specific targets that discriminate between state and private school pupils were “wrong” and actually risked favouring affluent children from “middle-class comprehensives”.

Hackers attempt to sabotage Ucas system

Computer hackers tried to sabotage the Ucas website just hours before thousands of students received their A’ Level results.

Withington Independent Girls School pupils receive their A level exam results in Manchester

The official admissions body, which is responsible for processing exam grades and organising the clearing system of university and college places, admitted that the “criminal and sustained” attempt to crash the site could have caused huge disruption.

Mary Curnock Cook, chief executive of Ucas, said: "The incident was contained very, very quickly and no personal data was released to anybody.

Tougher A-levels pass the grade

Record numbers of students claimed places at British universities today after more took the tough A-level subjects seen as a vital gateway to higher education.

students took to Twitter to tell how they have been awarded places despite seemingly falling short of offers.

Data published by the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service showed that almost 386,000 applicants had been accepted onto courses – up by 31,600 in just 12 months.

Clearing 2013: Russell Group offering 3,000 courses

Almost 3,000 courses were still available at Britain’s best universities today as elite institutions scrambled to recruit more bright students.

Some 3,000 courses have been made available by the Russell Group through clearing.

Two-thirds of members of the elite Russell Group – 16 out of 24 – are advertising degree places through the traditional clearing system.

Courses are being left open to students who may have narrowly missed out on their original offer of a place at another highly sought-after institution.

But many are also likely to be taken by students who want to “trade up” after gaining better than expected A-level grades – shunning their existing course offer.

A-level results 2013: Labour's £540m diploma qualification axed

Labour’s flagship qualification introduced as an alternative to A-levels is to be axed despite almost £540 million of taxpayers’ money spent developing the course.

Labour's Diploma qualification will be axed this year.

Exam boards confirmed that the Diploma would no longer be offered as a standalone qualification from this autumn because of a lack of Government support and dwindling pupil numbers.

Figures show 9,568 pupils aged 14- to 19 sat the course this summer.

Private schools 'preparing to dump A-levels', heads say

Britain’s leading private schools are preparing to abandon A-levels because of controversial reforms to the “gold standard” qualification, headmasters have warned.

International A-levels are winning favour with private schools.

Rising numbers of fee-paying schools could scrap the exam in its current form amid a backlash over changes to way the qualification is run.

As sixth-formers across the country prepare to receive their results tomorrow, it emerged that many heads were considering shifting towards an alternative version of the exam created for schools overseas.

Medical Students Head to Eastern Europe

BUDAPEST — When a first-year medical student from the United States left his skateboard by the entrance of a 19th-century lecture hall here, Professor Andrea Dorottya Szekely swiftly picked it up and reprimanded its young owner.

What Semmelweis University might lack in technology is compensated for by Old World approach to medical education, students say. Dentistry students, for example, spend the first two years of their studies with the students of medicine.

“We do things differently here,” Dr. Szekely said of Semmelweis University, a 244-year-old institution in Budapest that focuses on the medical and health sciences. Students are expected to stand at attention in classrooms until a bell rings and their professors enter, for example.

School leavers 'lacking basic skills', say business leaders

Top companies are struggling to recruit teenagers with basic skills because schools have been turned into little more than “exam factories”, business leaders warned today.

The British Chambers of Commerce said schools had to place a greater emphasis on basic skills rather than exam preparation.

The British Chambers of Commerce said that many employers had been left “disheartened and downright frustrated” by poor levels of literacy, numeracy, communication and timekeeping among school leavers and graduates.

On immigration, dull effectiveness could beat noisy aggressiveness

Some migrants to the UK are more welcome than others, it seems. But 'Go home'-style posturing plays on the public's worst fears

The Home Office's 'Go Home' van. 'It’s pathetic, really, watching a government rely on posturing, not policy, to deal with a legitimate public concern'

Whether it's the Home office Twitter account celebrating arrests for immigration offences or sending ad-vans to cruise London boroughs telling illegal immigrants to go home, the government's aggressive, noisy public campaign is more an expression of the struggles politicians have in dealing with immigration than it is a policy.

Students raise concerns over quality of university courses

Tens of thousands of undergraduates are still not happy with the quality of their degree amid complaints over teaching standards, the marking of work and student life.

The National Student Survey showed that satisfaction rates were high overall but concerns remain over many aspects of university courses.

A major survey of 300,000 final-year students found that overall satisfaction ratings across British universities remained high in 2013.

In all, some 85 per cent of students said they were content with the quality of their degree course – the same as a year earlier.

From classrooms to suicide bombs: children's lives in Afghanistan

Child casualties in Afghanistan are rising, among them children recruited as suicide bombers by the Taliban – often with their parents' blessing. But education is the way ahead

Andrew O’Hagan meets young Afghan girls during a visit to Kabul last month. School attendance has surged in the last 10 years, but many other children are still in great danger.

At the juvenile detention centre in Kandahar there are two sets of children. The first are riotous and loud, arrested for theft and other crimes of that sort. When you give them a piece of paper and ask them to write down the reason they are in prison, they simply scratch lines into the paper or scrunch it up. They can't write. The second group are silent. But when they take the sheet of paper, they begin to write the most beautiful script, their sentences full of fire and argument. These are the children who were recruited to be suicide bombers – and their mothers tell them they will succeed next time.

Top companies 'competing with universities for bright school leavers'

Up to 110 school leavers are applying for every job with Britain’s biggest companies amid warnings of a continuing backlash over university tuition fees, the Telegraph has learnt.

Figures suggest that many pupils who would have been previously expected to enter higher education may shun university altogether in favour of the workplace.

Just days before the publication of A-levels results, it emerged that tens of thousands of bright teenagers are preparing to shun £9,000-a-year degree courses in favour of the workplace.

Shortage of maths and science teachers

More than 100,000 A-level students will be taught maths and science by untrained teachers because of a shortage of trainees, new figures suggest.

Education experts fear the lack of teachers could put sixth form students at risk of being taught by someone without specialist training and discourage sixth form students from studying particular subjects.

Meet your child’s new teacher: the iPad

Every pupil in Thailand already has one. In Britain, it could one day replace lessons and teachers themselves. But is the iPad doing students more harm than good? Julia Llewellyn Smith reports.

Technological devices today are as essential a piece of equipment as a slide rule and a pencil case

In a classroom at Goffs School in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, neatly uniformed children are sitting in rows, gazing at the teacher. The scene is reassuringly like school as I remember it in the Eighties, until Shaun Furzer, leader of digital learning – what? – clears his throat.