>> Anyway I'd suggest that the main use of school exam grades is to secure
>> a place at a college or university, so a relative measure is probably
>> all that's needed.
>
> Well, maybe.  If you buy into the idea that pre-uni instruction degrading
> isn't a problem.  An absolute measure can be used to uphold an absolute
> measure, and if the pre-uni schools aren't meeting it, then they need to
> up their game, rather than the universities lowering their standards.

Just by the nature of setting questions I think the standard over a 
longer period (eg 10 years) would be easier to keep consistent. So you 
could still look at the absolute scores averaged over the long term to 
analyse the performance. Giving students relative scores will avoid them 
being penalised by the year-to-year variations in the difficulty of the 
questions.

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