to drag this away from language for a moment
regardless of whether or not exams are getting easier* if most people are getting A grades as seems to be the case, then the exams just aren't hard enough.

There is far more of a divide in levels of intelligence and academic achievement than is shown by exam results in which case they need to be changed to be a better reflection of what is going on.

When I applied to uni I need a B and two Cs to get on my Civil Engineering degree. Not an easy course by anyone's standard.

and yet these days Joe Average ends up with about 43 A grades at AS level. Are they that much smarter than me? Fuck no, my handwriting is terrible!

*for the record, I'm certain they are
( Vipros. clever got me this far, then tricky got me in, Wed 4 Feb 2009, 10:40, 1 reply)

Now you come to mention Civil Engineering ............
Friend of mine does some part-time lecturing at a local uni and on the first year of the B.Eng degree course he spends the first six months getting all the students to an acceptable level of maths skills.

He reckons even those students who got an A at maths A level have huge gaps in their overall knowledge and comprehension of the subject - calculus is no longer taught at GCSE level and is skipped through in half-a-term at A level.

First time he wrote dy/dx on the board half the class thought it was a new rock band.
(apollo36uk, Wed 4 Feb 2009, 13:51, closed)