I would suggest that the system is problematic at the moment – it’s not that exams are easier or have been “dumbed down”, but the contrary, that higher grade boundaries should be altered to reflect the increasing number of people achieving the higher grades (I would have been happy to get a B in G&P).

I am quite split on this, though, because at the same time I do not see any value in making it harder to achieve the “lower” grades (C and below) as many, many students struggle to even get these – and in terms of employers, four grade C GCSEs is more valuable than it’s vocational “equivalent”.

Of course if so much emphasis weren’t put on meeting these targets by the government (both grade achievement and university entry), then the system wouldn’t have to be so “fair” and many of the problems now being faced would not exist.

This article might help clarify the distinction that needs to be made in this discussion.

It has, however, been pointed out that employers are now finding it difficult to evaluate job applicants on the basis of exam results, and that is because the system genuinely has been tampered with to such a degree that it has created a real problem that didn’t exist before.

That I think is now becoming broadly accepted, which is where “the system” is falling down and could make it difficult for your generation post-University.

We shall see what happens in practice, but in the meantime some of us are understandably concerned. That’s all. We’re on your side!

However, I am still not bought by any of the arguments that there are major flaws in the system (although I can accept that there are some problems with it).

What bothers me more, though, is that our efforts are not undervalued so much by the flaws in the system as by all the pious and bitter people who did badly when they were at school and can’t bear to see the next generation doing better than them.

So, rather than congratulate them, they claim that exams are getting easier, thus truly undervaluing the results and insulting the students who have worked their hardest to achieve them.

I’m obviously not suggesting you are one of these people, John, but there are a lot of them out there (Yourmedway’s blogger yesterday, for example!).

I am very much aware of the current debate as to the effective devaluing of such results by Government manipulation, and the difficulties all of that has given potential employers. That, though, does not mean that you and your fellows didn’t put in the sheer effort, anguish and all the rest of it that we did in my day.

The system is deficient, not you.