A YORK head teacher has suggested the International Baccalaureate could help address Government concerns that A-levels fail to prepare students for university.

In a letter to exam regulator Ofqual, Education Secretary Michael Gove said universities should dictate the content of A-level papers and review them each year, as leading university academics had suggested that A-levels were not preparing students “well enough for the demands of an undergraduate degree”.

The move could potentially spark an era of grade deflation, with fewer students getting top marks.

John Tomsett, the head teacher of Huntington School, the only school in York to offer A-levels and the International Baccalaureate Diploma (IBD), said the IBD stretches students intellectually, addressing the potential concerns of universities, which are already busy ensuring consistency in their own sector.

While he said he said he was confident the A-level system challenges able students and equipped those going into the workplace, Mr Tomsett said the volume of students gaining high grades “must make it difficult for university admissions to select students”.

Mr Tomsett said: “The ability to think independently is a highly sought after skill and the nature of the current A-level qualifications, with their reductive assessment objectives, can sometimes mitigate against students developing their thinking skills.

“The International Baccalaureate Diploma does three key things which we think are academically valuable and the universities certainly like. Firstly, the IBD allows students to specialise whilst maintaining breadth as they have to study six subjects, with a modern foreign language, English literature, a science and mathematics compulsory.

“Secondly, the IBD insists that students write an extended academic research essay which they undertake with minimal guidance; and lastly, the whole course is based around one fundamental question, ‘How do you know what you know?’ This means students develop the skills to think independently as a clear element of the course they study.

“The International Baccalaureate Diploma at Huntington has been incredibly successful; three-quarters of our students who have received offers from Oxford or Cambridge for this September are IBD students. Last year one of our IBD students went up to Cambridge to study English literature.”

Mr Gove’s idea is that exam boards should still set courses, but that schools would be advised to enter them only if they were approved by a Russell Group University.

Labour’s Barry Sheerman has challenged the idea, suggesting that the real problem with post-16 education is the”narrowness of scope” in subjects.