JUST a week after record A-level results were revealed, those of the GCSE out today show yet another year of highest-ever achievement and it is indisputable that the merit that goes with this has been earned by hard work and effort by both pupils and teachers.

Inevitably, however, this volume of success and the decade-long trend it follows, brings renewed charges that the GCSE is becoming too easy.

Yet, even if one agrees with the wholesale rejection of them by ministers, examiners and teachers, it has to be asked whether, even if the examination certificates remain as hard as ever to obtain, they are worth what they were as the keys to opportunity and advancement for those who hold them.

It will be recalled that the GCSE was brought in as a combination of the old Certificate of Secondary Education and the former GCE O-level - to measure and reflect ability across a broader range and because the CSE had become a virtually valueless qualification in comparison to the widely-respected 'O' level.

Today we see that 98 per cent of candidates are now achieving official pass grades in the GCSE.

But its value is more realistically measured - particularly for how schools score in the examination league tables - by how many pass in the top A* to C grades that are classed as equivalent to O-level success.

When this is done it is plain that much of today's success - some 43 per cent - corresponds with success in the junked CSE which few valued.

In short, for all the hard work and degree of difficulty that lies behind the achievements being celebrated and praised today in education, is there not a real danger that the GCSE is being devalued down towards CSE level simply by the scale of the success - much of which is then unofficially written off by the standards of the examination league tables and so, in turn, by teachers who are set this yardstick?

If the world of education is, rightly or wrongly, dismissive of those who say the GCSE is getting easier, they ought not to reject out of hand the call today by the Tories for a "wide ranging review" of the examination.

The aim should be to have not just increasing success, but also a standard that remains trusted.

We have one, but we cannot be sure about the other.

Unless we can trust the standard there will have been a lot of hard work for a decreasing reward.

Let there at least be a test of the GCSE's worth by the kind of thorough review called for today.

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