Why on Earth do we need another pass grade in the exam system? Aren’t A, B, C, D and E enough? Especially as everyone knows that only C’s or better are worth anything. Apparently not.
First someone realised that English students were not achieving particularly high grades. This left them with a number of choices: a) Improve the education system, b) Make the exams themselves easier, or c) Lower the marks needed for each grade. Not wanting to cause too little controversy, they chose both b) and c).
So far, so odd. But now it has been noticed that lots of people achieved lots of A’s. This hardly shows that the A grade distinguishes the best candidates, as it should. The solution: don’t make exams harder, but introduce an A* grade. Why? Does it really need to be introduced? No. The A grade can be raised to the level that the A* will be at, and then the A still remains the best.
This is the perfect case of the stupidity of the exam situation. Will we have A**++! grades when the A* becomes easy?
Posted by rob_botch 