Worth noting that it was around 9% from 1964-1984, and has been pretty steadily climbing since then (with a levelling off at around 25% in 2010).
What I'm wondering is what the factors truly are here and what to do with this data.
In my opinion these grades are there to differentiate the skill levels of the people, "short-term-memory" being the major skill here (another topic for another day). But if nearly half of the people are the same elite... this system of skill-measuring is getting useless.
Maybe there should be a better alternative?
Grade deflation is pretty-much impossible in the UK due to pushy parents; I've heard talk on the news of changing the grades from alphabetic to numeric ...
We should swap to a numeric system but shouldn't just swap an "A" for a "1"; we should show grades as percentiles. Being in the highest 10%/5% is a more meaningful comparison than saying "A" if the meaning of "A" changes over time.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/aug/05/grade-infl...
That they are in the top 45% of students might concern some ...
> The sharp rise in top grades at A-level means that the proportion getting top A* and A grades has risen by almost 75% since the last time conventional exams were taken in 2019.