Letters | 4 September 2010

U and Pre-U

Sir: I am, as a student approaching the A2 year, sick with envy at the small number of my friends lucky enough to be currently taking the Pre-University course. Not only did John Witheridge (‘An answer to the A-level debate — and Gary Lineker’, 28 August) succinctly describe the previous year of school for me with ‘spoon-fed coursework, punctuating and confusing the learning process with obsessive assessment’, but he also displayed the far more appealing alternative in the Pre-U syllabus. While I continue to attempt to meet the endless, pointless ‘Assessment Objectives’ of A-levels, it appears that Pre-U students enjoy a far more rigorous, yet encouragingly independent, form of learning. At A-level I expected to have the chance to immerse myself in my chosen subjects after the intense boredom of regurgitating set phrases at GCSE. However, I was disappointed that my short period of enjoying these subjects was punctured by AS exams, which were just as uninspiring as the GCSEs. If given the choice, I would have no qualms about choosing the Pre-U.

Lara Johnson
London N1



Tagging after

Sir: Heaven knows what will become of the coalition’s new policy to combat crime by having fewer police (‘Law and Disorder’, 21 August) and, in particular, handing out ‘community sentences’ to lesser offenders rather than sending them to prison. In over 35 years of prison visiting I have seldom befriended an inmate who had not done a ‘community sentence’ of one sort or another before reaching their cell in HMP Wandsworth or wherever. My experience inclines me to share Professor Ken Pease’s view that the shock of arrest and one month in custody would save us 60,000 offences a year, especially if the law moved at twice its present pace. Community sentences are already running at 186,000, an increase of 40 per cent in a decade.