Why exam results should be getting better all the time
By Gary Thomas. Yearly improvements are an inevitable by-product of social progress, says Gary Thomas. August is a dry time for newspaper editors, but until last year’s unexpected fall in top A-level grades, they could at least rely on annual warnings of grade inflation and exams getting easier. When last summer brought the first fall in the proportion of pupils achieving the top grade for 21 years, The Daily Telegraph described this as “cause for celebration”.
Are year-on-year improvements unfeasible, or are they an inevitable consequence of a wider phenomenon? As Frank Spencer so memorably described it to Betty: “Every day in every way I am getting better and better.”
Frank was right, but his maxim is more than a self-help anodyne. Last year in the New South Wales school athletics championships, a 12-year-old boy, James Gallaugher, ran the 100m in 11.72 seconds. A century ago at the first modern Olympic Games in Athens, this would have comfortably secured him the gold medal over the actual winner Thomas Burke (US, 12.0 seconds). If we could time travel, today’s boy – not yet shaving – would beat the 1896 Olympic champion. More...