FactCheck: are A-Levels getting easier?
Updated on 16 August 2007
Are today's numerous A grades thanks to high quality teaching and strong investment or easy-peasy exams?
The claim
"Sustained progress in A-Level results over the last decade is down to high quality teaching and strong investment in our schools. Higher pass rates mean more young people are achieving advanced qualifications that will help them fulfil their ambitions - and this is something we should all celebrate."
Schools Minister Jim Knight
The background
Like mud at Glastonbury and test match defeats for England, exam rows are part of the English summer.
A-Level results came out today, and for the twenty-fifth straight year, they have shown an improvement in the number of students passing their exams.
96.9 per cent of students got at least one grade E pass - up from 96.6 per cent the previous year.
The number of papers graded A also saw a big jump, up from 24.1 per cent to 25.3 per cent last year.
This could be down to two things: either our education system is getting better, and students are getting brighter, or the exams are getting easier.
So, is there really "grade inflation"? Or are the nation's teenagers simply getting cleverer?
Analysis
The government's own assessments (from the Curriculum and Qualifications Authority) generally maintain that standards have remained constant over the past 10 years.
That's to say that the actual difficulty of the questions has remained broadly constant.
Some particular topics may have moved up and down the syllabus - so a topic that was once first-year A-Level may now be final year GSCE, but the reverse is also true. So that doesn't prove that the actual content of exams is being debased.
Testing the exams
But how well do exams measure the ability of pupils? Some research into this question comes from the CEM centre at the University of Durham.
Its research uses a constant test format to gauge the academic ability of pupils, rather like an IQ test. It's called the TDA, and unlike GSCEs and A-Levels, is largely constant from year to year.
Data for this test stretches back to 1988. It shows that students of a given ability - who scored 50 on the TDA - have been getting better grades at A-Level every year.
In Maths for example, a student who scored 50 would have got just above a D in 1988. In 2006, they would have scored halfway between an A and a B.
In other words, students of the same level of ability are achieving consistently better grades every year - by a factor of about one and a half.
Clear evidence of rampant grade inflation?
The correlation is pretty strong, but it doesn't necessarily prove that the exams are getting easier. Teachers might be getting better. Students might be trying harder. All these factors come into play at some point, and it's very difficult to tell how much.
But one factor in particular plays a role. Exam boards and schools have been making exams easier to pass, and unashamedly so.
In other words, modular courses and so on have made it easier for students to demonstrate a given level of knowledge, and thus pass an exam, even though the exams themselves aren't any easier.
Professor Robert Coe of Durham University compares it to climbing Everest. If you give people oxygen and modern lightweight equipment, it makes it easier to get to the top - but the height of the mountain has not changed.
Qualifying standards
So what matters - the height you achieve or the effort you put in to get there?
"At the heart of this is, 'what do you think the standard represents?' The modular structure makes quite a lot of difference. Exams have been made more pupil friendly, and that is a good thing, but the same level of performance is now easier to demonstrate," he says.
One negative consequence here is that it increases the number of people achieving top grades, making it harder for top universities to identify the most able candidates.
It's tempting to think that the rapid growth in achievement is the result of government interference, but this doesn't really stand up. The A-Level examination boards are actually quite separate from government.
However, there are several different boards setting exams, and they all operate in competition with each other.
Many teachers are very discerning in how they select the exams their pupils sit, carefully choosing the ones which will be easy to pass. So if the boards want to attract pupils they have a strong incentive to make sure their exams are easy to pass (without dropping academic standards, which they are not allowed to do).
The verdict
Every time grades go up, people will look around this silver lining to find a cloud. It's true that rising exam grades don't automatically represent a cleverer nation, or better teachers - although those factors may be at work.
In fact, the biggest reason may well be that there's a kinder, more pupil-friendly exam system in place. Is that a bad thing?
Well, if you struggled through your exams twenty years ago, you might be entitled to think that today's pampered youth didn't equal what you achieved the hard way, all those years ago.
FactCheck rating: 3
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Sources
CEM report on changes in standards at GCSE and A-Level for the ONS
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