Are Exams Getting Easier?
by Exam pass rates rise each year, but what is this down to?
It is often reported in the media that exams are getting easier because record number of students pass GCSEs and A levels year on year. The majority of people have the opinion that people aren’t more intelligent therefore it must be the tests which aren’t as challenging as they once were.
This is contradicted by research which points to the average IQ test scores increasing over the generations which is probably due to people encountering more problem solving throughout their lives than in previous generations. This, however, should not account for the rate at which grades seem to be improving, particularly for A grade passes.
The main disadvantage of this grade inflation is a lack of distinction between the most able students since the A grade is not as highly valued as it used to be. Some higher education institutions do in fact go above and beyond A level grades (Imperial College, London now insists all candidates sit an entrance examination before admission), as is done by some colleges at Oxford and Cambridge Universities.
Many demonstrations of current students sitting past papers from old style exams and receiving significantly poorer results than they do in modern exams indicate that exams possibly are easier. Older examinations tend to require the candidate to deduce a sequence of answering the questions without hints and he or she has to decide what is relevant from the information given in the question, whereas modern exams break it down subquestion at a time.
Questions have a habit of being recycled from a few years previously, so some students are taught to pass tests rather than learn the subject, this has come amid calls that the pressure on teachers for their pupils to pass is too great, all at the expense of the reputation of the very thing they are trying to achieve.
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