"John Rumm" wrote
| It think you will find the primary concern is that the exams might not
| be as difficult as they once were. This has little to do with class,
| since it devalues the achievement of all the pupils, and the merit of
| the qualification for all, irrespective of class.

During the last "That'll Teach 'Em" series, I was thinking how similar my
education had been (in a rather backwards, academically demanding, but
otherwise useless school) in the 1980s to that of the 1950s.

I have proof-read BA dissertations written in English that I would have been
ashamed to submit as O level homework.

There's a second series set in a Secondary Modern starting later tonight.

| As an aside, while in a bookshop the other day, I picked up some of the
| text books for A level computer science (or ICT as they call it these
| days). I was a little disappointed to see that depth each topic was
| explored to was almost trivial in comparison to what I would have
| expected to see at A level. In fact it was somewhat less than that which
| was expected of us when we did O level - let alone A level (in 1985/6).

That's because it's probably not real Computing Science - it's an A Level in
Using Microsoft Proprietary Applications.

| ... universitys

Ahem :-)

Owain