Maths 'no better than in 1970s'Why would anybody believe that the kids had "gotten smarter" in one generation? When I was a kid, humans were thought to be static, no basic changes in physiology or mental makeup during historical times. I know this viewpoint has changed and now people talk about evolution within historical times. But from one generation to the next? Does anybody really think one generation is born "smarter" than the previous one? If the tests were at all objective, they should be resistant to such changes. So nobody should be surprised by this result.
Pupils are no better at maths now than they were 30 years ago - despite a rise in exam grades, a study suggests.
Researchers asked 3,000 11 to 14-year- olds in England to sit maths exams taken by pupils in 1976, and compared their scores with the earlier results.
Analysis suggested there was little difference between the two generations.
As for the grades going up. That's a well known phenomenon: grade inflation. It has been happening for many years. Again, nobody should be surprised that higher marks today don't mean "smarter". It just means it got easier to get the higher mark.
The only real effect I know of is the Flynn Effect. IQ scores have been going up from when they started (early 20th century) until the 1990s when this effect disappeared. To my mind that simply showed that some aspects of the IQ test were cultural and could be "trained" for. But pretty well every kid now has been made "test wise" so the Flynn Effect has disappeared. The clue that this effect was a measure of "test savviness" is here:
Some studies focusing on the distribution of scores have found the Flynn effect to be primarily a phenomenon in the lower end of the distribution. Teasdale and Owen (1987), for example, found the effect primarily reduced the number of low-end scores, resulting in an increased number of moderately high scores, with no increase in very high scores.
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