Tinstaafl,
You've got me there. I don't know.
I think (prob 30 in TAF terms)that all that has hapened is that allowances have been made when nearly everybody fails one or more specific questions.
There can be such things as absolute standards, that you either pass or fail, regardless of the distribution of ability in the general population.
What should have happened in the JAA, and should have happened long ago in the CAA, is that users should have defined the skill and knowledge levels required for, say, a FO on his first pax sortie. This would have defined a syllabus of training and in turn a series of training objectives. All objectives have the unwritten introduction "At the end of this course the student should be able to...."
Schools would then take the objectives and set up training programs to achieve the aim. This would be tested internally by school tests and externally by the JAA exams.
The system would then hand over to the users new FOs with the stated qualifications.
Of course, this did not happen, and the rest is history. Still, with a lot of effort and care we have a reasonably good system, not perfect, but not complete cr*p.
When the Portugese rep first saw the proposed Air Law objectives he said " this means no Portugese will ever fly again". It isn't all that bad.
Dick W