Latest news with #Alevels
The Guardian
3 days ago
- General
- The Guardian
London's BSix college helped me gain qualifications and integrate into British society
I feel saddened by the news about BSix college in Hackney, east London, losing its A-levels (Staff and students fight loss of A-levels at London college helping disadvantaged learners, 10 June). I am for ever grateful to have been a student at BSix. I came in the UK as an unaccompanied minor aged 16 and English isn't my first language. I didn't understand a word of it. A friend of mine helped me get into BSix to learn English in January 2007 – the course was called English as a second language (Esol) then. The staff really supported me until I was confident enough to read, write, listen to and speak English. After a year, I was given the opportunity to do my BTec first diploma in sciences, equivalent to GCSEs, and GCSE English and maths. Afterwards, I did my BTec national diploma in sciences for two years, equivalent to AS and A2, which enabled me to go to university to study biomedical sciences and then further my studies in adult nursing. I am currently working as a theatre nurse in Eastbourne district general hospital. I would say that BSix gives great opportunities to young people from different backgrounds to get basic requirements to further their studies in the UK. It hugely contributes to our integration into British society and we later contribute positively towards the development of the NikoulareEastbourne, East Sussex
The Guardian
10-06-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Staff and students fight loss of A-levels at London college helping disadvantaged learners
Teachers and students are fighting to preserve A-levels at a college that works with disadvantaged young people who have failed their GCSEs, some of whom have gone on to complete Oxbridge degrees. The sixth form college in Hackney, known as BSix, has offered one of the lowest entry requirements in the UK for pupils who want to pursue A-level courses. The entry requirement is just one GCSE pass grade. Help and support is given for exam retakes, allowing those who pass to take A-levels. The vast majority of students come from minority ethnic backgrounds. Some students have been in care, in young offender institutions or in pupil referral units. BSix has now been taken over by New City College, a large institution with campuses across east London and Essex. It has been renamed Hackney Sixth Form campus and internal proposals recommend discontinuing A-levels in favour of more vocational courses, along with dozens of redundancies, including compulsory job losses if too few staff take up voluntary redundancy. Hackney National Education Union officer David Davies described the proposals as an act of 'educational vandalism'. On Thursday staff are going on strike in protest against the proposed restructuring, the threat of compulsory redundancies and unacceptable workload. A petition has been started calling for current provision at BSix College to be protected. One current 17-year-old student said: 'I have been at other places but felt very boxed in. BSix is the first place that has really seen me as a person. I am willing to fight in any way I can to save these teachers' jobs. They are doing remarkable work.' The teachers and students have backing from Diane Abbott, the local MP, along with the rapper and activist Akala and various black academics who have come to the college to give talks to the students. The late poet Benjamin Zephaniah was also a supporter of and visitor to the college. Leanne Gayle, 28, a former student at the school who gained a 2:1 in history and politics at Cambridge before studying law. She has now secured a training contract with a top law firm. 'There was a different vibe at this place,' Gayle said. 'BSix gave me a second chance. There were so many enrichment opportunities here. A group of six of us wanted to get into Oxbridge, five of us succeeded.' Another former student, Emmanuel Onapa, 25, had previously attended a secondary school where he failed to achieve academically before moving on to BSix. 'Before I went to BSix I didn't feel seen or heard,' he said. 'Thanks to this college including enrichment programmes like the Knowledge is Power course I was able to gain a voice.' Onapa went on to gain A-levels and then attended University of Exeter where he secured a 2:1 degree and is now working as a journalist. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Staff and students fear that the Knowledge is Power course, which teaches students about their history, will be downgraded as part of the NCC reorganisation plan. But NCC denies this will happen. Akala, who has attended education sessions at the college over the years, said he has been inspired by the dedication of the teachers and resilience of the students. 'The college is in the spirit of what universal education is about,' he said. Stafford Scott, the director of Tottenham Rights community group, said: 'BSix has built a powerful legacy of working with students from disadvantaged backgrounds who have been written off elsewhere and helps them reach top universities across the UK. It doesn't just teach, it believes in young people.' A spokesperson for NCC said: 'It is common for schools and colleges to periodically review the curriculum they offer and their staffing structure. A current internal review is under way with the sole purpose of driving opportunity and increasing student achievement while addressing some specific areas of low achievement at the previous BSix campus, so that local young people are not disadvantaged. 'No decision has yet been made regarding A-level provision at the campus. Whatever the outcome of the review, every student is expected to stay at the college and complete their course. We are committed to all our learners' best possible outcomes.'
The Independent
05-06-2025
- Business
- The Independent
It's peak A-level season, but AI is stealing young people's futures before they have even started
The rituals unfold as they always have: hushed shuffling inside a stuffy exam hall, nervous energy silently bouncing off the walls; an impossibly loud clock, counting down to impending doom. This week, up and down the country, rows upon rows of students will sit hunched over their desks clutching 'lucky' pens; praying that their hard work has been worth it. It is, of course, A-level season, which, done right, is supposedly the coveted, golden road to university, graduate jobs, money and a life lived right. Yet, this year feels a little different. Beyond the double doors of the sports hall, the world is changing at a rapid pace. While the next generation of workers study harder than ever, the qualifications they've been told hold the key to the next important step are suddenly in question: artificial intelligence (AI) isn't only analysing data and producing basic graphic design, but diagnosing illnesses and drafting legal documents, too; today's path, no matter how well they score, is muddied. This is a youth whose strange paradox means that the entry jobs and world they're preparing for may no longer exist by the time they reach it. For graduates, recent and future, it's not exactly optimistic. There's barely a corner of the job market left unaffected, and now even industries that were once considered safe – in medicine, or law, for example – are beginning to utilise AI and automation at the expense of human work. This week, Business Insider reported new data that confirms that companies are hiring less, having found that, over the last three years, 'the share of AI-doable tasks in online job postings has declined by 19 per cent'. The report continued to say that further analysis led to a 'startling conclusion: the vast majority of the drop took place because companies are hiring fewer people in roles that AI can do' – and they are hitting junior, entry-level roles first. This month, the first law firm providing legal services via AI was approved by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. While many firms are using AI to support and deliver a range of back-office and public-facing services, Ltd will be the first purely AI-based company. It is announcements like this that are causing enormous worry for a generation who are looking to get their first foot on a career ladder. 'It means that the graduate job market has changed dramatically, in a very short period of time,' a careers consultant at a leading London university tells me. 'AI is causing a huge amount of uncertainty and a lack of confidence – both on the side of the employers and the students and graduates.' Where are you supposed to begin now, then? How do you navigate getting that first foot on the career ladder once the (promised) stepping stone has been whipped away? 'Even people who work in affected industries themselves aren't sure,' she adds. 'They know what the pipeline was back in their day, but now they really don't know how this is all going to affect recruitment and, ultimately, career trajectories and the traditional ladder.' We all know that AI is fundamentally warping the workplace as we know it – what experts are trying to work out now is exactly how, and how fast. According to reports from PwC, McKinsey, and the World Economic Forum, around 60 per cent of current jobs will require 'significant adaptation due to AI' over the next 10-30 years or so; by then, AI will simply be another integrated part of our day jobs. Goldman Sachs goes one further: by 2045, their research finds, up to 50 per cent of jobs could be fully automated, and estimates that 300 million jobs will be affected by AI. Not even that A* in history can compete. But while these projections feel far into the future, recent reports show that AI is already having a significant impact today. Already, there are a lot fewer opportunities, and according to the Financial Times, graduate job listings dropped from 7,000 in 2023 to 5,800 in 2024. That's a drop of 17 per cent. This means those on the market are more competitive than ever. In 2024, employers received an average of 140 applications per graduate vacancy, according to a report from Times Higher Education; a 59 per cent increase from the previous year and the highest number recorded since 1991. 'The anxiety in this cohort of students is off the scale,' explains futurist, author and Gen Z and Gen A expert Chloe Combi. 'But this situation has revitalised a conversation about which subjects are necessary. Every kid that's gone through exams and university in the last decade has been told 'learn to code', over and over again. But rapid progress suggests some of those high-employment computer science degrees might even become obsolete. In so many cases, there's an AI programme that can do that in a micro proportion of the time it would take a human to do the jobs these kids have been told to aim for. It's awful – and it's not like they've been given or followed the wrong advice, far from it. They've just been given advice that's become outdated in the blink of an eye.' With white-collar, middle-class jobs now more under threat than ever, many are turning to more traditional blue-collar work – trades like being an electrician, plumber, or healthcare worker or hairdresser – sparking conversations about the power of the working class being revalued under this new industrial revolution. Outside of trades, the advice is tentative but also reevaluates what is valuable. Investing in skills like critical thinking, strategic creativity, or very human traits like storytelling, negotiation and persuasion may now prove more lucrative than anything more traditional. The expert itself, has some ideas, too. 'As AI like me becomes more integrated into the workplace, students need to adapt intelligently,' the tool explains, in its ever-creepy self-aware tone. 'Don't only aim for a specific job title – those may not exist in a few years,' is its first point. 'Instead, study fields that build foundational thinking.' Next, it advises to 'combine technical and human insight' by, for example, taking a degree that blends fields, like philosophy and AI ethics, or computer science and psychology. Finally, back to the same point – don't specialise in your career if you can help it; 'be adaptable, not replaceable', it warns, quite bleakly, and 'learn how to work with AI, not compete against it'. That black hole of uncertainty is only expanding. 'In the next 10 years, there's going to be a very necessary transformation of the university system,' Combi says. 'Unless you're very privileged, I believe, a degree that's learning for learning's sake is going to become obsolete. Hopefully, there'll also be a massive resurgence of apprenticeships, and hands-on apprenticeship degrees, which are a combination of the practical and theoretical.' To be fair, this has been necessary for a long time. The promise of apprenticeships as a solid alternative to expensive degrees never really followed through – a combination of historical class bias, the stigma of 'less prestigious' vocational qualifications and a lack of policy and funding has consistently held the idea back. But that could now all change. For now, the quotes have been learned and the equations solved; the sleepless nights and frantic panics will soon be over for another year, and another generation of A-level students who lived to tell the tale. But though it might be unpredictable, they have an exciting road ahead: one that could be the perfect challenge for a digitally-fluent and adaptable Covid-generation. If anyone can adapt, it will hopefully be them. It won't be until after they've picked up those long-awaited results in August that the real test will begin: not the one they just sat, but the one no one prepared them for.
Telegraph
27-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Mark Petchey cannot coach Emma Raducanu, so his daughter is instead
These two first met in the quarter-finals of the Wimbledon juniors, seven years ago, when Swiatek dished out a more typical 6-0, 6-1 beatdown. The next time Raducanu saw Swiatek, it was on TV in 2020, while Swiatek was surging to her first French Open. 'I did my A-levels in 2021,' Raducanu recalled. 'In 2020, I remember I didn't play tennis for six months. And I was watching this unfold. I was watching my peers, like some that are around my age, do really well. I felt it was so far away. I felt like I was being held back. But it fuelled a lot of fire and hunger inside of me that when I came back after an 18-month hiatus, from competing in 2021, I ended up having one of the best summers.' With regard to Swiatek in particular, Raducanu added: 'She's obviously had a lot more experience, a lot more time playing tennis and competing than I have. I haven't really had the same exposure or level of training because of school and everything. So I feel like now I'm trying to catch up and do double time and overtime work. But yeah, it's still a long way to go.' In their most recent meeting, which came in the third round of January's Australian Open, Swiatek reprised the junior humbling with a 6-1, 6-0 win. Were they to meet on English soil this summer, one suspects that it might be more competitive, especially as Petchey has promised to be available for the whole of the grass-court season without any competing commitments. For the moment, though, this looks a steep hill to climb.
The Sun
24-05-2025
- General
- The Sun
Students in South nearly TWICE as likely to get three A* A-level grades than those in North
STUDENTS in the South of England are nearly twice as likely to get three A* A-level grades than those in the North, data reveals. Just 5,800 of the 258,000 who sat the exams last year came away with three or more top grades. Of those, 3,779 were from the South and 2,021 in the North. Nine out of ten of the best areas for A-levels were in the South. Pupils in reading, in Berks, came out top — with seven per cent hitting the highest grades. Dozens in London suburbs Kingston, Newham, Sutton and Barnet also got top marks. The Government stats show Salford, Gtr Manchester, fared the worst, with a single set of three A* grades. Social mobility expert Professor Lee Elliot Major called it a national scandal, saying: 'These figures lay bare a brutal truth — your chances of the highest academic success at school are still shaped more by where you live than what you're capable of. 'This A-star divide highlights the vast differences in support offered to today's children and young people both outside and inside the classroom. 'Increasingly A-level grades are as much a sign of how much support young people have had as much as their academic capability. 'This isn't just a North-South education divide. It's a London and South East versus the rest Divide.' The Department for Education said: 'We are taking measures to tackle baked-in inequalities.'
