The 'Soft' Way Out

Target Audience: Teenagers Age 16/19 – Students
Purpose: To Argue

The ‘Soft’ Way Out…

A Levels have been a cause for controversy over the past few years concerning their difficulty. Many believe that they are nowadays far too easy and don’t provide students with enough valuable skills for the world of work. Whilst yet to be actually proven it should be taken into consideration the vast improvements in the teaching methods and the rise of outstanding schools- with over 1500 classed as outstanding since 2005 by Ofsted. Are A levels truly losing their touch or do students just keep getting better and better surpassing their predecessors?

Education has drastically changed since the days where degrees in media and computing would never have existed but are now popular career paths amongst aspiring journalists and programmers. With the advances in technology and improvements in research new courses began to emerge to prepare students for the rapid changing society. These new courses however haven’t been received positively by everyone.

Many students struggle with the choices they have to make regarding further studies and what will get them into their desired course. The harsh reality is that not all subjects are viewed equally by universities with some A levels such as Media Studies, ICT and PE snubbed and branded ‘soft’ and ‘unsuitable’ for entry whilst Cambridge has gone as far as posting their own list of ‘less preferred’ subjects:

• Accounting


• Art and Design


• Business Studies


• Communication Studies


• Dance


• Design and Technology


• Drama / Theatre Studies


• Film Studies


• Health and Social Care


• Home Economics


• ICT


• Leisure Studies


• Media Studies


• Music Technology


• Performance Studies


• Performing Arts


• Photography


• PE


• Sports Studies


• Travel and Tourism

Surely an A in Media Studies would be favourable for a media course rather than an A in Maths. Although Maths is a more respected subject, the skills gained in Media Studies are far more relevant to the course and should prove as an advantage. It should. But it isn’t. Many of the top end universities believe that if a student can prove to succeed at a more ‘challenging’ subject like the sciences, they can more or less take on any course. The difficulty of an A level of course is highly subjective. Where a student may find Biology a walk in the park, they may very well struggle with a more abstract yet less respected A level such as Psychology.

Difficulty varies from person to person and it’s certainly an outrage to dismiss ‘soft’ subjects where some students put so much work into and in some cases more work than the traditional subjects. I have a friend who studies Art and Design and she spends on average 3 hours a day on her artwork. Perfecting and refining every little detail often staying up late hours whereas I, a maths student, am able to get off easily with minimal work as it comes naturally to me.

It will take some time until these subjects are acknowledged and rightfully respected due to them being relatively new to the system. If there’s one thing we can count on is that if society keeps developing at the rate it has in previous years, we should be expecting new qualifications to be offered.