Everyone of us with friends or children who have taken exams recently knows how incredibly hard they have had to work and feels nothing but admiration for what they have achieved. We all offer our warmest congratulations to those individuals who worked and sweated for these results.
This year a record breaking 25.9% of A-level students were awarded an A grade - more than twice the number in 1990. Government ministers have predictably sought to shine in the academic glory achieved by teenagers and herald these results as evidence of the success of their education policy. They conveniently forget of course that any real improvement in standards is primarily due to the hard work of students and teachers! What ministers should be doing of course - a duty which they positively owe to those hard working teenagers who took exams this summer - is making sure that educational standards in exams are maintained.
However, there is an increasing body of hard evidence that exam standards have actually slipped significantly and even some evidence that this grade inflation may actually be masking a decline in general levels of academic ability since the 1980s.
Research by educationalists at Durham University suggests that the A-level standard now awarded an A grade in many subjects would have only merited a C grade in the 1980s (i.e. 2 grades lower). In fact, their research suggested that in A-level Maths the standard is now 3 and half grades down (i.e. a D grade in the 1980s might now get an A grade). Their research provides hard evidence of what many long serving teachers have long suspected.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) predictably dismissed the Durham research. Many, like me, will find it profoundly disturbing that politicians and spin doctors at the DCSF, who are not even trained teachers, actually think they know more than professional educationalists at a leading university.
In fact, the Durham research - which measured the level of conceptual understanding required to get specific grades in exams, produced very similar conclusions to a 2006 research study done by educationalists at Kings College London for the ESRC. The London University team found that in 2004 the level of conceptual understanding that 11 year olds had was 2-3 years behind their counterparts in 1990, i.e. there had been a significant decline in the general level of educational ability.
Taken together, these two pieces of research suggest that far from
standards of learning improving as government ministers keep claiming -
the reverse may actually be true. That is to say, the intellectual
ability of British children taken as a whole (i.e. not necessarily you
or your particular child!) has actually decreased compared to what
children in the 1980s achieved. This decline in learning (i.e. what children comprehend) has occurred despite there being a whole range of evidence that that teaching
(i.e. what teachers do in the classroom) has significantly improved
since the 1980s. A number of education writers point to the most
probable cause of this decline in learning ability as being 'toxic
childhood' (See Sue Palmer's excellent book with this title - which
David Willetts called 'one of the most powerful books of the year'). 
'Toxic childhood' is the cocktail of factors from lack of outdoor play,
overuse of computer games resulting in a lack of social skills, violent
video games, poor parenting and family breakdown etc., which inhibit
learning. Significantly, this list includes a number of issues also
identified by Iain Duncan Smith's Social Justice Policy Commission, as
being long term causes of poverty.
Taken together, the findings of the London and Durham University research teams suggest that this decline in children's learning ability may possibly be being masked by 'grade inflation' i.e. exams getting easier.
The situation is hidden partly because in the 1980s both A-levels and GCSEs were marked by what is termed 'norm referencing' i.e. a set percentage of students got each grade. This was later replaced by 'criterion referencing' - in which students have to achieve certain set standards. This makes it hard to compare standards just by comparing results. However, when GCSE was introduced the grade F mark (equivalent of the old CSE grade 4) was set at the 50 percentile mark i.e. 50% would get grade F and above and 50% below. By comparison today in most subjects around 75% of students achieve grades A*-C - (the equivalent of an O-level pass) i.e. 3 grades higher. Now it is entirely credible that improved teaching could have improved pass rates from 50% getting a particular grade to 75% getting the same grade. However, it is much more questionable as to whether, with even the best teaching in the world, children who would have got a low grade CSE in the early 80s would now get the equivalent of an O-level pass (which implies they might go on to A-level and potentially university).
So have exams got easier? Many teachers feel that A-level became easier a few years ago when they became modularised instead of being examined just at the end of the course. Last year the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) announced that in future GCSEs would also be modularised - potentially allowing students to retake modules to improve their grades.
Similarly, many schools have met government targets to increase the number of A*-C GCSE passes by students taking easier subjects such as PE and Media Studies. Research findings announced last year by Durham University suggested that GCSEs in PE, Media Studies, Textiles and Drama were approximately one grade easier than GCSEs in Languages, History and IT.
When this evidence is taken together with the Kings College London Research that showed a significant decline in intellectual ability among 11 year olds - it raises the uncomfortable question of whether grade inflation at both A-level and GCSE might possibly be masking an actual decline in school leaver's intellectual ability.
The truth is that government targets to constantly improve can all to easily have the opposite of the intended effect. They pressurise teachers to teach to the test, rather than widening the thinking skills and knowledge base of children and they put pressure on schools to steer children into easier subjects.
Is grade inflation masking a decline in educational ability? Whilst there is a body of evidence that points to that possibility - the truth is that school exam results have become rather like the government's inflation figures - everyone knows what the official figures are but no one definitively knows what the actual levels are - and that is a scandal for any government to preside over.
Consequently, I would suggest that the next Conservative government makes it a priority to:
1. Urgently review the target driven culture that the present Labour government have imposed on schools that is distorting Children's education.
2. Commission educationalists to establish clear and permanent bench marks in terms of knowledge, conceptual understanding and skills for each subject and grade to stop any further grade inflation.
3. Commission a major independent research project to determine whether children and young people's educational ability has actually been rising or falling during the last decade.
