I wish we could train them to answer the questions asked better (SPAG?). THen it would be just do this in the exam and let's talk about cool stuff and how to do secience properly. The new science GCSEs are a joke. Last year two of my guys got 400/400 uniform marks. Now they are very bright but……?
We even have to teach about homeopathy as if it were a real and viable medical alternative.

Look at the apparent inability to distinguish between 'they're', 'there' and 'their' as a simple but telling example.

Aye, right. After all everyone over the age of 30 knows how to do that, don't they?

I am convinced that the ability to teach students what they need to know and do to pass the exams has improved markedly, but whether that gives them the skills and attitudes they will need to succeed later in life is a different question.

That may be true. However perhaps when the older generation judge the younger generation based on whether the young'uns have learnt at school the same things that the oldies learnt, they may be falling into the trap of assuming that the skills the young generation needs to succeed in life will be the same as those they needed? [Apologies for the long sentence! I used to know how to write concisely but then I read some H.P. Lovecraft and never fully recovered. 🙂 ] After all, back in my school days my elders may have been shocked that I was never shown how to use a slide rule, but it has never once been something that I've needed to know.

Producer Aled did Geography & got an A. To get an A, his %age of correct answers was 57%!!
So you can get almost 1/2 of the answers wrong and still get an A!!

Were the marks based on a constant 1 question = 1 point? Perhaps he answered a lot of complex questions correctly but skipped on shorter questions? Perhaps not but we don't know and I wouldn't rely on Radio 1 DJs to present their findings in the most statistically thorough way…

Good point Chrisl, everyone compares it with their own school days but we're all products of our own time The kids don't build the system, they just deal with it best they can, same as we all did.

i would suggest the answer is to assume a normal dsitribution, the Average student gets a C and work from there. Ok you might get a shift year to year, but i guess it isn't really significant. What it would do is show the most able in each year group. And give a real reference frame for where their strengths lie, where they should go onto.