Sir Peter Williams, the man charged with sorting out school maths teaching, has added his voice to those who claim A-levels are much easier now than they used to be.
With this, the government announcement last week of "relentless focus" on the basics in secondary schools and the difficulty of GCSEs reportedly set to plummet, school standards are out of sorts it would seem.
Schools minister Jim Knight did his best to quell the rumours of dumbing down, saying the idea is to test pupils ability to apply knowledge rather than giving them primary level lessons.
He said pupils would need to demonstrate "functional skills" in English, Maths or ICT to get good (ie above C grade) GCSEs - by knowing, for instance, both how to work out compound interest and understanding how to apply that to a business loan or a mortgage.
Robert Coe, director of secondary projects at Durham University's education research unit agreed that A-level standards have slipped but said it's not necessarily a bad thing.
But is this alleged lowering of standards a cause for concern? Does it simply serve as justification for yet more government reviews of teaching? Or perhaps it's just a warm up for the annual bashing of standards as exam results are released next month.
