13th July 2018 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Everyone in education knows that GCSE and A Level grades improved year upon year for 20 years until recently. The government introduced changes to the style and difficulty of exams so that they would prove more challenging, and test understanding rather than memory. On its own, this doesn’t necessarily mean lower grades, but it allowed a repositioning of grade boundaries, which we all believe is what the government wanted so that they could reduce the number of top grades and convince us that GCSEs and A Levels are the gold standard exams we all want the to be.
The question is: do we believe that the intelligence of our 14-18 year olds continuously improved over 20 years? You don’t have to be cynical to say “no”. Why should our intelligence be increasing? The time period is so short, and the improvement was dramatic, and all this at a time when we were told that our education system was being pushed to the point of failure. Many people believe that examination boards consistently produced easier exams to sell their papers to schools, in a race to the bottom.
The race to the bottom argument sticks in the throats of teachers and tutors, however. We want to believe that we’re all doing a good job, and that we’re getting better at our job. If someone’s argument is that every generation’s average intelligence is the same, and therefore grade boundaries should always divide students in the same ratio then educators are left with a feeling of futility; how do we get any job satisfaction when we’re being told that, as a nation, we’re not allowed to demonstrate any improvement in our tutoring or teaching ability?
In truth, the answer probably lies somewhere between the two arguments. The linear grade inflation cannot be explained simply by better tutors, and simply comparing two exams 20 years apart will show you how they have become slightly easier. However, most of us do believe that we are becoming more intelligent, and our best and brightest are better than ever before. The question is how to reflect this, keep everyone happy and not dumb-down exams.