In reply to Phil Payne:
When GCSEs were 'O' levels (prior to 1988), level 1 would be equivalent to GCSE grades A, B and C. A star wasn't introduced until 1994. But to get a level 1 you would need to get 70%. The exam boards felt that it was unfair to deduct grades for poor grammar etc so that was part of the reason they scrapped the O levels and introduced GCSEs and GCSEs were also introduced to incorporate non-academic based and more vocational based qualifications like GNVQs, NNEB, NVQ and other BTECS.
I teach psychology and we have a system where although we allow students with GCSE grade C in maths and English onto our A level courses, we try to make sure that within the grade transcripts students actually achieved 70% or more even though 60% is the pass rate. Quite a few schools do this, particularly grammar schools.
"because that could mean someone gets a C grade pass when in reality they got less than 50% in the actual exam.
Now to my question. Has this always been the case for grade boundaries? Maybe my memory is failing me, but I seem to remember that when I did my GCSE exams that the boundary for C was 70%. Can anyone point me to a table where I can see how these boundaries have evolved over the years, if indeed they have change"
I think it also depends on the exam subject. I.E. it's easier to get a C in English because of the marking system (and get 70 odd %) than in maths.
If you look at AQA, National Curriculum or Bite Size you can see different tables but the best one is to look at different LEAs or the office of national statistics for grade tables.