Sir, – Regular readers will recall the furore at the beginning of 2014 when the governing body of Richmond School resigned en-masse following some appallingly poor A Level AS results in the previous year and finding themselves limited in what improvements they could introduce given the defensiveness of the school’s management team.
The AS results are very important to a student, comprising half of their final A-level grade.  Last year many who had been ill-prepared for their exams and scored badly at AS level left Richmond School and restarted their A-level studies elsewhere.
I have just received AS results for 2014. These are some of them: Biology – U grade 28 per cent, below C grade 64 per cent. Chemistry – U grade 35 per cent, below C grade  61 per cent. D&T – U grade 22 per cent, below C grade  82 per cent. Economics – U grade 53 per cent, below C grade 91 per cent. Physics – U grade 18 per cent, below C grade 70 per cent.
A U grade (ungradeable) means that the examiner decided that the work wasn’t even worthy of the lowest E grade. C grade and above is considered a good pass mark.
Richmond Sixth form is selective, it only admits students with at least five good GCSEs (many have handfuls of A*s and As) so what can be going wrong here?
AS results are very important as, not only do they make up 50% of a student’s final A2 grade, they are the first indication of academic ability that a university admissions tutor will see as A2 results are not available at the time that applications are being considered.
So, when I see a statement from the headteacher  (D & S Times Sept 12) that “AS results in 2014 were outstanding”  I wonder which results he is choosing to ignore. If my son were considering taking biology, chemistry, D&T and economics at Richmond School I would not be seeing much  “outstanding” here.
Parents and students are not stupid (though it may sometimes appear as if that is how we are seen by educators) and will vote with their feet when issues like this come out into the open. This year’s sixth form intake at Richmond School is 107; in 2012 it was 205.
Many of us are saddened by the deterioration in standards in a school that we love but until the school and North Yorkshire County Council acknowledge that there are problems there is little prospect of improvement. Simply repeating the mantra “the school and college continue to go from strength to strength” just isn’t good enough.
HOWARD SMITH
Richmond.