Superpilot,
Not that many years ago there were no feedback questions. JAR was new and no-one had any idea what was going to be in the exams. Guess what? You actually had to know and understand the syllabus to pass the exams. Failure rates were, almost certainly, higher than now but you're wrong to assert that
I don't believe for one minute you can pass the exams with a 75% grade just by reading the Oxford, Bristol or Jeppessen Course Notes/Books.
With a huge amount of help and guidance from Alex and the team at Bristol I passed them all first time so it is possible but not neccessarily easy.