My mate found his old GCSE maths paper online recently, and retook it for fun, after having been taught maths at college in a mature student environment.
He said he found it a lot easier than the first time around; so has exactly the same paper got easier?
The answer is no of course not, what a stupid question - it's the same paper.
This idea that tests are getting 'easier' is based around statistics - more kids are getting better results, which could be down to:
- The exams getting easier
- Students studying harder
- The only students taking the exams being the ones likely to get good results.
Nowadays it seems everything is getting more competitive, so I fully believe it's possible that children are under pressure to get the best results to stay ahead of the game.
Likewise it's possible that schools want good results to make it appear that they're teaching is better than other schools, so it may be that less able students are encouraged not to take the exams at all, the result being that while the school appear to be producing great exam results, they're also producing an 'underclass' of students who instead of leaving school with bad GCSE grades leave school with no GCSEs at all, consigning them to a life in the hottest and noisiest jobs, or a life on benefits.
So I don't think it's as easy as assuming from a list of numbers on a bit of paper that exams are getting easier without putting the exam papers side by side and having a go at them both. From what I've heard school lessons are becoming more 'feminised' ie based more around coursework and theoretical work which girls traditionally excel at and boys are bored by, which could explain the idea that boys are increasingly falling behind at school - without having tinkered around with the style of teaching it could even be that the opposite is true.
