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There is an interesting trend in test scores in exams (GCSE and A-level) in the UK: they are increasing, or so the trend in the grades would tend to show. This is known as grade inflation and affects other countries, too.

Why is this? I have heard several reasons. The first is that students are just generally getting smarter. The second reason I have heard is that exams are getting easier. To me (as a student), it personally seems like the exams are getting easier, although it is hard to judge. What independent research has been performed to determine if it is exams or students?

Sklivvz
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Thomas O
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    Don't forget that the nature of the world has changed. No longer do people need to keep a lot of information stored up in their head when they have access to instantaneous resources from anywhere which can tell you these things. Is it a bad thing that ability is now based on intuition and expertise rather than remembering useless things? It frees up a lot of head space. – Chris Dennett May 11 '11 at 22:11
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    @Chris I completely agree. One of the best examples is a programmer with internet access. There is no reason for the programmer to memorize thousands of different functions, algorithms, etc. when he/she can look them up with ease. Thinking ability is a far more important skill nowadays. – jamesbtate May 12 '11 at 04:14
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    False dichotomy. The third alternative is that teachers (or rather, teaching methods) are getting better. Now, this is a *known fact*, and readily explained through the improvements in the research of didactics. Whether this alone explains the effect is of course another question. – Konrad Rudolph May 12 '11 at 11:38
  • The Flynn effect would suggest that students are getting smarter (or at least smarter by the metrics being measured). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect – Andrew Grimm May 12 '11 at 13:06
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    Actually there's many other options: students are putting more time into academics, students study more effectively. There is no reason to believe that the exams mentioned measure smartness. Does knowing which year Richard of York got killed mean you are smarter? I think not. – apoorv020 May 12 '11 at 16:47
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    Sometimes policies induce grade inflation. This are some observations in my own university: the 2 best students of their year will receive a PhD scholarship. So at one point professors in one discipline start rating their MSc students higher, to get a bigger chance on a 'free' researcher. Other professors notice this after a few years and start giving higher grades as well and they can start over. – johanvdw Jun 07 '11 at 17:09
  • Another option is that the students are learning the test rather than the knowledge or ability to apply it. In this case neither necessarily are true – Chad May 01 '12 at 13:51
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    I agree with Oddthinking's answer - you need two people to sit both tests. My granddad kept many test papers over the years and used to tutor me from time to time. After seeing many from 20+ years ago, I believe it is far far easier now - but also a lot more targeted towards what is actually needed. If you take maths as an example, an advanced paper seemed to cover pretty much the whole "Maths" world and just one or two question per area where as now, you seem have shorter papers with entire sections on each area of maths. In addition, because of this, I believe it is much easier to prepare fo – wilhil Jun 06 '11 at 15:33
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    Thanks for agreeing with me... But, wait! that's the opposite conclusion of my answer! :-) When you have someone sit the tests, you need to be sure there are no cultural biases. My 8 year old niece would unable to pass my grandmother's math's test (If you have £20 and buy 3 items for 6s, how many guineas do you have left?) but would thrash her in the Create A PowerPoint slide section. – Oddthinking Jun 07 '11 at 01:56
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    @oddthinking Maybe I didn't read your answer correctly then :/ - I just meant, like for like e.g. maths test v maths test - and yes, My grandad knows new money AND old english money conversions where as I wouldn't have a clue on it... and would fail any test from years ago. – wilhil Jun 07 '11 at 09:28
  • I agree with your answer, the exams are getting easier ( some evidence would be nice, though ). I once heard a university professor stating that the bar has been lowered ( in universities, at least ) due to the fact that the number of students has greatly increased. – Mihai Rotaru Jun 07 '11 at 19:31
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    I think Chad and Konrad have it right when you combine their answers. Teachers are rewarded by having their students do well on the standardized tests so they learn to teach to the test. While students learn that scoring well on the test gets them into better schools, so they are motivated to learn to take the test. So I don't believe students are getting smarter, they are simply specializing in how to take the test rather than receiving the broader education of years past. – Dunk May 01 '12 at 22:12
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    I did exams as an undergrad where I know the questions came from the same pool that my dad had to answer in his time. However, the conclusion would be mixed: on average (% correct answers), we were worse. But the percentage of people passing (at 50% correct) was roughly the same: one quarter (but we were few, so all this is not very precise). – cbeleites unhappy with SX Oct 14 '12 at 20:16
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    Don't forget that teachers do increase the grades to help their students because of competitiveness based on exam grades after graduation. – jjack Aug 23 '15 at 10:01

2 Answers2

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The idea that people are getting smarter in recent years is known as the Flynn Effect after James R. Flynn who promoted the idea.

It is more prominent on IQ tests which are standardised against the population average.

Wikipedia explains:

The only way to compare the difficulty of two versions of a test is to conduct a separate study in which the same subjects take both versions. Doing so confirms IQ gains over time. The average rate of increase seems to be about three IQ points per decade in the US on tests such as the WISC. The increasing raw scores appear on every major test, in every age range and in every modern industrialized country although not necessarily at the same rate as in the US using the WISC.

As well as giving an overview, the Wikipedia page discusses many of studies on the effect, possible causes (including better nutrition) and the theory that it may be slowing down recently.

Oddthinking
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    I note with interest the suggested causes, which include nutrition, "teaching for the test", television and computer games, infectious diseases and even less in-breeding! No-one seems to want to give teachers any credit for being better at their job at raising bright children than teachers were three generations ago. I wonder why that is not considered a factor. – Oddthinking Jun 06 '11 at 11:28
  • Because the heritability estimate for intelligence is .50-.80 it's implausible for the whole Flynn effect (2 SDs in ten decades) to be accounted for by environmental influence (e.g. teachers). That's been discussed in the literature a lot too, but maybe this deserves its own question (it's research-level though). It's also not necessarily relevant to the question as teaching-to-the-test probably occurs to a smaller degree with IQ tests than with school tests (Increased output control in the US purportedly led to this). I might flesh this out if I have time, but feel free to beat me to it! – Ruben Jun 06 '11 at 18:45
  • Interesting, because I would have thought the genetic changes over 100 years would be negligible too. Does that leave population changes? – Oddthinking Jun 06 '11 at 18:51
  • That's why they call it a paradox. I linked to an article in [another question](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1304/were-people-shorter-in-the-middle-ages/3776#3776) that does, to my mind, a good job of summing up the debate (and a much better one than Flynn's recent paper). He argues for heterosis which is genetic change that is plausible for 10 decades. Richard Lynn argues for **prenatal** nutrition (which would be confounded with genetics). Probably there is no single cause. But this is really something where I quickly run low on characters in the comment space :-) – Ruben Jun 06 '11 at 19:36
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    Unfortunately all this is anecdotal but: teaching in my opinion has been forced to be dumbed down, comparing my tests from 25 years ago with today's ones shows that (especially in maths and the sciences) today's contain not only less memorisation, but less initiative and lateral thinking requirements! The system also doesn't cope well with individuals who are ahead of the curve - focusing effort on those behind it - I actually got asked not to let my kids study extra at home! – Rory Alsop May 02 '12 at 09:20
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    An extra data point [here](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/05/02/biology_chemistry_exams_ofqual/) – Benjol May 02 '12 at 12:34
  • @Oddthinking IQ in particular should be independent of teaching, it's a study of how well one reasons not the knowledge they posess and theoretically should not be effected at all by the actual education (realistically it is because real life and theory is never the same, but not significantly enough that a small variance in teaching skill should effect IQ). Plus to hypothesis that teachers are getting better you now have to explain why todays teachers should be any better then the last generations. It just adds another layer of indirection and uncertainty to any hypothesis. – dsollen Aug 26 '15 at 13:28
  • @dsollen: Are you assuming that teaching/education is purely about knowledge? Do you believe that rational thought and creativity are not able to be taught/developed/trained? Probably a discussion for a chat room. – Oddthinking Aug 26 '15 at 13:42
  • @oddthinking honestly, I sort of am arguing that. As ruben said intellect has a heritability estimate as high of .80, and environmental factors like nutrition and *EARLY* childhood development contribute significantly to that other .20. By the time a child has actually reached an elementary school much of their raw IQ is already decided. There is still room to learn and develop, and teachers play an important role in that education, but I think raw IQ is mostly set at this point. Even if teachers could play say 10% of a role then teachers would have to be 10% better to effect iq by even 1% – dsollen Aug 26 '15 at 14:29
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    @dsollen: With the right notable claim, this might make a good Skeptics.SE question. – Oddthinking Aug 26 '15 at 15:08
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Wikipedia has a many a word on this subject eg.

A-level

Between 1963 and 1986 A-Level grades were awarded according to norm referenced percentile quotas (A <= 10%, B = 15%, C = 10%, D = 15%, E = 20%, O/N = 20%, F/U >= 10% of candidates). The validity of this system was questioned in the early 1980s because, rather than reflecting a standard, norm referencing may simply maintain a specific proportion of candidates at each grade. Which in small cohorts can lead to grades only indicating a candidate's relative performance against others sitting that particular paper, and so not be comparable between cohorts e.g If one year only 11 candidates were entered for A-Level English, nationally, and the next year only 12, how can you be sure that the single A awarded in year one was equivalent to the single A awarded in year two. In 1984 a decision was taken, by the Secondary Examinations Council, to replace the norm referencing with criteria referencing, where grades would in future be awarded on Examiner judgement. The criteria referencing scheme came into effect in June 1987, and since it's introduction Examiner judgment', along with the merger of the E and O/N grades, from June 2002, has increased the percentage of A grade awards from 10 to > 25%, and the A-E awards from 70 to > 98%.

similarly:

GCSE

In September 2009 and June 2012, The Daily Mail and The Telegraph respectively reported that teenagers' maths skills are no better than 30 years ago, despite soaring GCSE passes. The articles are based on a 2009 paper by Dr Jeremy Hodgen, of King's College London, who compared the results of 3000 fourteen-year-olds sitting a mathematics paper containing questions identical to one set in 1976. He found similar overall levels of attainment between the two cohorts.[38] The articles suggest rising GCSE scores owe more to 'teaching to the test' and grade inflation than to real gains in mathematical understanding.

arober11
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