GCSEs and A-levels are now far too easy

I was talking to my neighbour the other day about my daughter's GCSEs  and the A-levels of my son and she was saying how 'honestly though, they've got it much easier now - when I was at school there was no coursework so there was far more pressure on exams!' (my neighbour's in her 40s now).

I thought, well yes, more exam pressure. But, for a start coursework is very annoying. Secondly, they only did 7/8 subjects then (My daughter would love to be doing 7!! That's 4 less subjects than what she is doing/did!!). Also, far less people stayed on at college/6th form, let alone uni, in the 1970s (especially women) so there must have been less pressure on gaining good results, right?

I don't really know what life was like for my mum's generation. However, it just really annoys me when people decide to have a moan about how our kids lives are so easy when they don't even know! Maybe if they went back to school they would be very surprised?

My neighbour told m: "You must admit that GCSEs are relatively easy when compared in the days of yore, when there were things like O Levels or something of that sort. When I looked at some past O Level papers, they seemed ridiculously hard (not because I'm thick). People used to rarely achieve straight As before. But now, or last year, I remember something like 40 people getting straight As in their GCSEs in my year.
Labour has definitely dumbed down the education system to achieve his pledge of getting at least 40% of people into higher education.