MAIL COMMENT: Who wins when you can't FAIL exams?

A levels: Twins Issy (left) and Lucy Neal Hooke from Newent, who both gained the same three A grade passes in the same A Level subjects - English, Art and Business Studies

Another year, another set of record Alevel results.

More than 97 per cent of exams were passed, 25.9 per cent with a Grade A. 

And to those pupils (and their parents) celebrating success, the Mail gives congratulations.

How they must despair at the usual cries of 'grade inflation', and claims that A-levels aren't what they used to be.

Yet, sadly, such charges are unavoidable.

The overall pass rate has increased 26 times in a row, while the percentage of papers scored with an A has leapt from 16.8 per cent in only a decade.

Test chiefs even say the unfailable exam (with an outcome more akin to a totalitarian state's election result) will soon be upon us. 

Surely this cannot be explained away  -  as ministers seek to do  -  by 'hard work' alone?

No, schools have simply established precisely what is required for top marks and, faced with Labour's target-mad world, are teaching their pupils how to pass exams, not learn the subject. 

It may get good results, but denies eager children a rounded education, while storing up massive problems for universities and employers. 

Trying to differentiate ability among the thousands of youngsters achieving straight As becomes harder every year, and mistakes are inevitable. 

Pupils will end up on courses, or in jobs, for which they simply do not have the skills. There are no winners in this circumstance, whatever ministers may think.

Celebrating: Joyful A-level students from Badminton School, Bristol

That aside, this year's results throw up some interesting pointers for the future. For example, boys narrowed the A-level gender gap, making it the smallest for 11 years. 

And maths, sciences and languages showed signs of a comeback, at the precise time the economy is crying out for such qualifications. Perhaps we might even restore this country's engineering prowess, which once led the world? 

However, the large regional differences in achievement are rather more worrying. 

The South-East recorded a 50 per cent higher proportion of A grades than the North-East, and three times the rate of improvement since 2002. 

For a Government which promised opportunity for all, and deliberately skewed the university admissions system towards those from poorer backgrounds, this is nothing  short of a disaster. 

Ageism in the NHS

Once again, evidence emerges of appalling treatment of the elderly by the NHS, with thousands missing out on basic care for osteoarthritis, osteoporosis and other crippling conditions. 

Even the simplest, cheapest advice, such as doing exercises to alleviate the symptoms, is not being provided. 

The problem is that doctors are paid bonuses for treating heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure  -  but not conditions which normally only afflict the old, says the British Medical Journal. 

Thus they receive less attention, and the frail suffer. What madness. Ministers must end this shameful discrimination at once.

Muck and brass

Where there's muck there's brass. And that's certainly proved true of ex-local government minister Hilary Armstrong. 

For years, she held a string of senior posts in a Labour Government determined to take away the weekly bin collection. 

Now she is heading for a lucrative job advising  -  surprise, surprise  -  SITA, one of Europe's largest waste companies, and a cheerleader for bin taxes. 

Even to a public wearily accustomed to former cabinet ministers sticking their snouts in  the public-sector trough, isn't this decidedly whiffy?