As we crunch the numbers for Confirmation & Clearing, we have a lot of questions coming up about international A-levels and also reformed A-levels and their associated AS levels.
Now that international A-levels have been coded separately from 'vanilla' A-levels in the UCAS download this year they are correctly being excluded from our Banner tariff calculation. However, it is having a noticeable impact on our total tariff which is leading to lots of queries/challenges from academics and senior management. One issue is where students are now getting their tariff solely from AS levels, which are not coded as international AS levels (possibly because they were completed before the coding change, or because they really are vanilla AS levels), so they are coming in with low but non-zero tariff, so counting towards the institutional average.
Another issue is around reformed AS levels which our Head of Admissions believes should not count towards tariff if one follows through the logic of the reform, but is not currently excluded either based on coding or algorithm. Where the same student is then coming though with international A-levels e.g. with tariff only from (post-reform) AS levels, we have a strong push internally that there should be a way to exclude the post-reform AS levels from the tariff.
I hope I've managed to explain the issue clearly - it gets quite complicated with A/AS level, post/pre reform A-levels and international/vanilla A-levels in the mix, but I don't want to write an essay. Has anyone else had these conversations in their institutions, and does anyone have any insight into how the sector can respond to this issue?
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