I don't know why I'm suddenly thinking about this now (actually, come to think about it, I do, but you don't want that story) but there were a couple of things about the annual A-Level results debate that bugged me, when the results came out two or three weeks ago.

The main one was a statement from a representative of some education establishment - no idea who or which, since I was concentrating on the junction that always threatens to have someone in an oversized car drive into and through my off-side door - who was attacking the stereotypical representative from industry for claiming that the exams were getting easier. Her standpoint was that it was unfair on the students.

Now, you can see why the students would be annoyed. The blanket claims that the students aren't as intelligent or that they didn't work as hard aren't fair on them, and it's easy for news programs looking for scandal to get some quotes from them to show some outrage.
(Like the guy who claimed that the results were better because people were working harder. While I didn't myself, I knew people who worked incredibly hard at all levels, and for this person to have claimed that he worked harder would have been crazy. Which is why it's good that he didn't: he instead claimed that his entire year worked harder than mine. How is he justifying that?)

But at the end of day, if the qualifications are easier - and there's quite a lot of evidence to say they are, my personal favourite being a year-on-year comparison of the exam papers and the syllabi - then the students have no right to be offended by people saying so. That's not to say that their thunder hasn't been stolen: far from it. The thing that is unfair on today's students is that they have a set of qualifications that doesn't allow them to be reliably compared to their counterparts from other years, and that employers are prone not to trust.

So someone gets an 'A' at A-Level now. Am I going to claim that they aren't as smart as someone who got an 'A' in my year? Of course I'm not: are you paying attention at all?
They do have a qualification that is worth less than an 'A' used to be, however, and that's what isn't fair on them. A lot of the people who got 'A's this year were just as good as the ones who had them in my year. But, there are more A-grades around, and sufficient evidence for us to doubt that it's because there are more A-grade people. When considering a group of applicants with 'A's coming out of their ears, you don't know which ones have strong 'A's, and which have those that perhaps should be 'B's. Sure, you have plenty of other ways of working out which is the best for you, but the fact that you can't trust the qualifications makes them completely moot.

And that's what isn't fair on the students. If the qualifications are just as hard as ever, come out and prove it. You're going to have to, because the job market is employer-led, and if they haven't seen it proved that standards aren't dropping, they're going to maintain their distrust of the qualifications.

If you can't, don't tell us we shouldn't be publicly concerned about the qualifications because it isn't fair on the students. When people are shooting at you, don't hide behind children. That was one of the big things used to back up the claim that Saddam Hussein was a bad guy around the time of the first Gulf War...

Rant over.