A letter to The Times disputes the idea that 3 (or 4) A grades at A level are commonplace – only about 3% of candidates achieve this
This does not sound, proportionately, much different from my day, though the total numbers involved will be vastly greater. And like all oldies, I am sure that some of those who get 3 As are not a patch on those who did it way back when – they were really something
Thing is though, we did not attach nearly so much importance to grades. We probably wanted at least 1 A, in our best subject, especially if that were the one we were going off to university to study. And we also got a chance to show what we could do at S level, which replaced the old scholarship papers after universal grants came in. Otherwise we thought that 2 A grades were really enough for anybody who was not either a total swot or a real genius
University entrance officers seemed to recognise this too. There was the odd phenomenon of getting a lower conditional offer from your first choice institution than those you gave a lower ranking. This was partly because if a college really wanted you they did not wish to impose the extra pressure of needing high grades, or take the risk of losing a good student through one of those things that can spoil performance on the day
The other thing which has changed since my day, & really puzzles me, is the perception that science subjects are much harder than arts
There is a subtle difference here. We did not think that science was easy; we thought it was much easier to get high marks in the exams (even 3 grade As). Why, in mathematics it was even theoretically possible to get more than 100%. And experience seemed to bear this out
The reason was that science exams expected answers which were right or wrong, left much less room for losing marks because the examiner did not like your opinion of Elizabeth Is foreign policy.
