New ‘super grade’ to mark out brightest pupils
Britain’s biggest exam board is to introduce a new “super grade” to identify exceptional schoolchildren amid fears that too many pupils are already scoring top marks in GCSEs. 
The AQA exam board is to introduced an ‘A* with distinction’ in further maths IGCSEs.
12:31PM BST 17 Jun 2011
But academics insisted the elite grade was almost certain to become a prerequisite to get into leading universities and would eventually be introduced in other subjects and qualifications.
The move is likely to reignite the debate over “grade inflation” following a sharp rise in the number of pupils gaining top marks in recent years.
Over the same period, the proportion of As has nearly doubled from 12.9 to 22.6 per cent.
John Bangs, senior research associate at Cambridge University, told the Times Educational Supplement that “once one exam board does this, the others will follow”.
“This will become a prerequisite for Russell Group universities which look for these new distinctions as an easy way out of taking a 360-degree view of students,” he said.
Top universities already require students to score a string of decent GCSE passes as a minimum entry requirement – on top of A-levels.
AQA will introduce its new IGCSE course in further maths for the first time this September.
According to the exam board, the course includes additional algebra, geometry and calculus and is designed to stretch “really top performers” preparing for A-levels.
