IN what has become an annual rite of summer, students and teachers were today proclaiming record levels of success in the A-level examinations against a chorus of criticism that they are getting ever easier -- and more meaningless.

Certainly, the year on year upward trend of pass rates -- jumping this time by 4.5 per cent to 94.3 per cent -- conflicts with the possibility of human intelligence increasing annually at such a pace.

There is more fuel for the doubters and those concerned over the value of the once wholly-esteemed A-level as a qualification in the fact that if the trend continues, in 2004 no-one at all will fail the exam.

Is this ever-better A-level pass-rate syndrome -- mirrored in schools and colleges in East Lancashire and and even exceeded by some -- a product of the prizes-for-all culture that critics see as gripping education, whereby widespread success is achieved only by lowered standards?

It is, surely, a question that is much more complicated than that, especially when the rising pass rates and record levels of students gaining top grades may, in part, be explained by the reforms introduced two years ago that allow entrants to follow individually tailored programmes and target the subjects in which they are most likely to do well.

And if this has led to improved learning, the corollary is that it has inspired better teaching as well. For whatever the critics say, a lot of hard work does go into the teaching and passing of A-levels. And when, against the background of an ever-rising and near total pass rate, less than eight per cent of entrants achieve the equivalent of an A and two Bs, it is evident that a considerable degree of difficulty still remains in the tests.

But it would be fair to teachers and students and valuable to employers if the doubts about the A-levels were put to the test -- by a complete and independent review of the system in order to end the annual debate over whether rising success is a cloak for falling standards.