Insidious inflation

Can someone tell me when British universities began the practice of shaving off 50 per cent of grades (usually, 75 per cent of second-year and 25 per cent of third-year grades) for final assessments?

Arguments about grade inflation tend to be blind to the way rigorous marking at the unit or module level gets manipulated at the degree level.

While inflation might be debatable in terms of coursework marks, it is a fact in terms of degrees as a whole.

Anthony Mellors, Reader in English, Birmingham City University