Another piece of evidence

That A level standards are being reduced, largely for ideological reasons, few people doubt. Only the die hard egalitarians who are determined to pretend that all people have equal academic or intellectual gifts believe otherwise now, I suspect. (It's strange that they do not pretend that all have equal artistic, musical or athletic abilities - inequalities here have long since bee recognised.)

The recent evidence came in the fact that students who receive a grade A at 'A'-level in Mathematics are not all equally capable when it come to passing the Cambridge University entrance exam in the subject. In fact a third fail.

Mathematics has shown the most rapid increase in grades and apparent achievement in the NuLabour period. In 1999 28.3% of candidates achieved a grade A pass. By 2009 the figure was 45%. It might be possible to think of reasons other than "dumbing down", for example students unsuited to choose the subject are more efficiently filtered out to other subjects now.

Given the poor performance of pupils in mathematics at key stages, which is not improving, it is difficult to see how they could suddenly become so much better at age 18. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion reported by academics in other more objective subjects, that there has been a reduction in expected quality at all the various grade levels.