While some call them the ‘Gold Standard’, the role of A-levels for much of their history has been summed up in another expression: Margaret Thatcher’s contention that ‘there is no alternative’.
Increasingly, though, there is. A steady stream of schools is choosing to offer pupils the alternative sixth-form model offered by the International Baccalaureate. Its growth, as it happens, gathered pace around the time of Mrs Thatcher’s political demise in 1990.
