Are A Levels getting easier?

[flip_flop]

Once again, we have reached that time of year when people who have the temerity to suggest A-Levels are easier than they once were are treated with derision.

I took three A-Levels 18 years ago, and achieved the grades required to enter my university of choice: only exceptional students attampted a fourth subject.

Now, we read of students taking as many as six A-Levels and achieving high (often A) grades in each subject. To me this is proof enough that the exams must be getting easier.

It is obvious that children cannot be intrinsically more intelligent than those who took their exams 15 to 20 years ago.

So are they getting easier?

[wired]

I went back to college 4 years ago to learn a couple of languages , I was really saddened that I was being taught to pass an exam and not gaining a thorough understanding of the subject. I told my tutor who agreed with me and said that was how education is based now.
What will the pass rate be in another 25 years?

[puddicat]

this sounds wonderful but can they cope with the A level of life, sadly doubt it, its not about how clever you think you are, its how you take that knowledge and use it,you have to have the wow factor as in personality,can you sell this product that youre A level has designed!, for me this should be a A level course!!!,betcha you couldnt!

[Thack]

I was one of those taking O and A levels in the mid 60s when only a small percentage of people got top marks. Some 35 years later I was able to see the standards expected of my own children and was amazed at how low they were. For example, in the case of French and German we had completed all the grammar required by O level and A levels were almost exclusively the study of literary classics. Those taking GCSE nowadays wouldn't be able to keep up.

[NikkiB]

Le Chat - your experience comes as no surprise to me. Through my niece I'm acquainted with a very nice girl but she is uneducated as to not even know who Queen Victoria was. When faced with our family's astonishment, she ventured: "Was she, like, a real Queen? Where of?"

[sophie_1003]

I can't really comment on A-levels getting easier but students do still have to work for them, when I took mine (2 years a go) I wasn't really as bothered as most of my peers about what results I gained as I wasn't going on to uni and this showed in my results (a B and 2 Cs). But I do agree with the earlier comment about this generation being tested so much, children of 6 and 7 have to sit SATs for goodness sake!
I recently completed a childcare qualification which involved placements and was astounded at how much the children in infant schools are pushed to know, on my first day in a Year 2 class they were doing long multiplication with some children tackling sums with numbers into the thousands! I wasn't doing that until Year 6 so surely, teachers are getting better and so children are getting cleverer. However, I can see why common sense and basic skills are in decline as these children hardly have the chance to find out about the world when they have sums like that to deal with!