After I was lucky enough to take early retirement I signed on at several schoolsand colleges as a seasonal exam invigilator. I was quite shocked how the exam standards fell over a relatively short time. Particularly in the GCSE English language papers. First the instructions by a member of staff at the beginning included "You don't have to worry too much about the grammar, i.e. punctuation. " and a couple of years later spelling was added to the "not important" instructions.
This might be a great way to raise exam grades but as for keeping the standards high?