Survey

Are A levels the be all and end all? With the constant increase in competition for jobs combined with the parental pressure that many people are now under, some would be forgiven for feeling that if you decide to venture out into the real world without having done A levels, you may as well be attempting to sail around the world in a one man dinghy named Titanic !

Is this really the case though? We are constantly hearing about Virgin Company boss Richard Branson and the fact that he has achieved everything he has today on strength of character and not too many GCSEs.

Likewise John Major, for a time the leader of our country, was not too well endowed in the school qualification area.

If it is the case that A levels are nothing more than an excuse for young adults to fulfil the masochistic desire to be kicked out of bed by their mothers' at five-to-nine every morning with screams of 'get of bed or you'll miss that bl**dy bus again,' then why have teenagers up and down the country been so highly strung over the last two weeks?

In an effort to try and find out if the general public feel that A levels are really that important, I went into the town to speak to some people.

Richard Isaacs, - left -17 a student from East Morton is just about to enter the sixth form. After taking his GCSEs he spent a year at a high school in America. He says: "A levels are definitely not a waste of time. They are a very good thing if you are planning to go to university and get a degree, but even if you don't want to go to university, you still need them to get a good job."

Adrian Wade, a 33 year old university student from Cullingworth says: "I personally didn't do A levels but they are not useless. You could use your A levels to get a good job without needing a degree. I have just finished my first year at uni, but I didn't need A levels to cope with the work or to get to university in the first place. Although having said that a lot of students on my course found the first year easier because they had done A levels."

Asif Hanif, 18, is currently studying for a BTec qualification in IT and hopes to go to university, says: "A levels are definitely worthwhile, and even doing an extra year for retakes is not a waste of timne, as long as it is going somewhere. I have managed to get on to a good university course and I didn't do A levels."

Likewise, Danny McCartney, - left - a 23 year old Sales Executive from Beechcliffe thinks that A levels are a good stepping stone into further education.. "but I found that I could do exactly the job I wanted without doing A levels."

So it would seem that the message is go ahead and do your A levels, as long as you are certain it is what you want to do. If you don't think that further education is for you however, then maybe you can start your chosen career path straight after GCSEs.

After you've made that decision the easy part is just to convince your parents that you know what you're doing.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.