No
That's how it used to work in the days of GCEs ('O' 'A/O' and 'A' levels) because the universities (the only people who gave much of a toss about it) wanted to know that an 'A' grade meant you were in the top 5% of your cohort.

So you didn't really need to have stars and work experience and the like to be able to tell whether someone was genuinely bright or just a taught-to-the-test muppet.

In those times, the percentages of people getting certain grades didn't and couldn't inflate every year, because only 5% got an 'A', the next 10% got a 'B', the next 15% got a 'C', etc. (or whatever the percentage cut-offs were). Schools then tended to publish results of all their internal tests so kids could see how they were doing against their peers, because that's what mattered.

That was scrapped when GCSEs were introduced in about 1986-7 (I just missed them), for both those new exams and for 'A'-levels. Instead of getting better marks than 95% of the other people sitting the same exam as you to be awarded an A grade, now you only had to get more than 75% of the marks available on the test.

Grade inflation happens because teachers, like everyone else, get better at what they do over time, and now you only have to get a certain mark to get a certain grade. That's why there are so many kids getting 'A' grades that they had to introduce 'A*' to at least try to distinguish the brighter kids to help university admissions, recruiters, etc.

And why schools positively baulk at the idea of publishing competitive test results. Kids never really know how they're doing relative to the rest of their class. So you end up with unmotivated bright kids and thickies who think don't know they're thick.

Of course, there's a choice, and the system we have now is there because it was seen as unfair to write of such large proportions of the population in order to create and sustain a well-educated elite. But egalitarianism has its downside. It's the difference between having a singing 'test' to see if you're good enough to join the school choir aged 11 and being rejected (like my school did), then thinking you can't sing when you've got a perfectly serviceable voice for non-choral non-classical music; and only ever singing with your mates at the back of the bus or into a hairbrush in front of your bathroom mirror, thinking you're god's gift and destined for musical greatness only to go on X Factor and become a national laughing stock for 5 minutes.

In one system, the perfectly good get written off as inadequate. In the one we've now moved to, the useless think they are indispensible because nobody has ever told them they're no good.

...and relax
( shinyshinyscalp less a man, more a way of life, Fri 9 Mar 2012, 14:26, Reply)