"EXAMS aren't what they were in my day" is an old adage rolled out once or twice a year by grouches trying to deflate the annual announcements of record exam results.

Well now, thanks to a pair of sixth-form pupils in the North-East, these grumpy types may have been silenced for the final time.

Students Andrew Bellis, 17, and Tom Rowley, 16, from Newcastle's Royal Grammar School, claim to have proved today's kids are brainier than they were in previous generations.

They came up with the clever idea to get year seven pupils, aged 11 and 12, to sit the original school entrance exam from 1964.

In the English exam from 40 years ago, today's students scored marks ranging from five to 27 out of 30.

In the 2007 paper, prospective entrants scored between zero and 21 out of 30.

Andrew and Tom run The Grammar, the school's independent news magazine.

Andrew said: "When we set the papers we expected the results to prove that today's exams are much easier. It just shows that it is unfair to suggest that students today aren't as intelligent as they were 40 years ago."

Tom said: "The investigation has also provided some interesting insights into the different culture of the 1960s. Then, students were expected to answer questions on Sunday dinner and to know the name of the British Army's commander-in-chief. Today's examiners expect a far greater level of analysis."

The 1960s exams were uncovered as part of the ongoing reorganisation and cataloguing of the school's archives.

Simon Barker, the school's head of English, said: "These results confirm my view that standards have actually improved in English over the past four decades.

"When I first started teaching 22 years ago, the range of skills developed was astonishingly small, which is backed up by the fact that out of 13 comprehension questions on the 1964 paper only two offer scope for opinion and interpretation and the rest require merely brief factual information."

The 1960s exam also included papers in maths, intelligence and general knowledge.

The general knowledge paper asked such quirky questions as, what sauce do we eat with roast pork? and in what radio programme do the following characters appear?