Ahaa!! My suspicions were founded!!

From today's Irish Times:

THE LEAVING Cert exam has been significantly "dumbed down" and there is evidence of widespread grade inflation, according to a new study of exam grades.

The study, to be published shortly, is the first to track Leaving Cert grades across 24 subjects over almost two decades.

Its key finding is that the number of students gaining A and B grades in many higher-level subjects has nearly doubled since 1991. But the study finds little evidence to support higher academic standards. "In the most recent European-wide OECD/PISA study, there has been no detectable improvement in mathematics, reading and science in Irish 15-year-olds between 2000 and 2006, and so such an explanation of the increased Leaving Certificate results does not hold up."

...

The study concludes: "That there has been massive grade increase in the Leaving Certificate Examination over the period considered is beyond dispute and even a cursory inspection of the data confirms this . . . There is little evidence of higher academic standards. The increase is simply grade inflation - higher grades being awarded more easily."

The survey shows an astonishing increase in the percentage of students gaining Grade A and B (70-100 per cent) in Leaving Cert higher-level papers since 1991.

...

The study also finds that far fewer students are failing Leaving Cert papers. The new study says the grade inflation is all the more remarkable because the number of students opting for higher level has dramatically increased. It notes how "the lowering of standards in the higher-level subjects has driven this increase".

Queenie has suspected for a long time that the Leaving Cert (Irish exam that is similar to the IB) is for pussies these days. Not like when she were a girl, and there was just the one place in college, and you had to lock yourself in your bedroom and study for six hours a night for ten years to get the place.

IF YOU WERE LUCKY and your questions came up.

Having had several arguments with various people about it, Queenie has come round to the point of view that what's good for the child of the eighties is probably not so good for the child of the nineties.

But it's still effing unfair.

Us survivors of the horror that was the LC in the eighties deserve some respect.

We didn't know there was a lucrative future in VJing ahead of us if we failed.

I get no respect in my house.

I am considered weird because I know so much.

And that's just the stuff I mention.