The 2008 A level results show that 97.2% of students passed compared with 96.6% in 2007. And 25.9% gained A grades, a rise of 0.6%from the 2007 results. The number of students sitting A levels in 2008 was also up, at a record high of 827,737. This high success-rate is causing concerns in some quarters that the exams are getting easier. However the government attributes the annual change to the increased spending on schools over the period. Meanwhile the general secretary of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, Dr Mary Bousted, has berated teaching methods in schools as spoon-feeding students to pass exams without developing the desire to continue learning or gaining the skills necessary to learn independently. Adding to the debate, the general secretary of the University and College Union, Sally Hunt, suggested it is unfair to downplay the students? results and the hard work of their teachers.

Nobody knows what life forms may exist outside our own planet. The search for extra-terrestrial life in the universe took a step nearer to fruition with the discovery in June of what are believed to be traces of water on the surface of Mars. Life on our planet requires water and its presence on Mars may point towards the existence of past life on the planet. The Phoenix Mars Lander robot landed on the plains of Mars on May 25 2008, searching for signs that the Martian environment might once have been habitable to life. When it dug a ditch in the planet?s surface, photos revealed small patches of bright material. Four days later those patches had disappeared, causing scientists to speculate that they were water ice that had previously been buried and which vaporised when exposed to the air. Scientists insisted that if the patches had been salt, they wouldn't have disappeared and if they had been solid carbon dioxide, then they
wouldn't have vaporised.