Letters

A-Levels

How It's Used

“In Bob Crowley’s suggestively minimal classroom, with posters for ‘Casablanca,’ ‘Citizen Kane,’ and ‘La Dolce Vita’ pinned up on the walls, these gleeful grinds who have done well on their A-levels—‘those long-for emblems of your conformity,’ as Hector calls them—are in search of a passport to the good life…”

"The wartime leader had a style that was too repetitive, according to the computer being tested for the online marking of school qualifications. It rated Churchill as below average in the equivalent of an A[-]level English exam. His reference to the 'might of the German army' lost him marks because the computer interpreted this as an incorrect way of writing 'might have' rather than recognising 'might' as an abstract noun.

"Other authors, including Ernest Hemingway and William Golding, were also dismissed by the computer as not being up to standard in the American equivalent of an A-level English exam."

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