Maybe they did IGCSE, which is said to be a lot harder and would therefore be likely to have lower boundaries. This year coursework still formed an element of the GCSE, which I don't think they'd have done as they all said they didn't prepare for it. Unless they just submitted nothing and got 0 for that part of the course. It has very little weighting so potentially they could still pass with a 0 in coursework.
Thanks Trinity. Yeah, I was talking to my mum about the way the media constantly say that our exams are getting easier and she said she never had to learn some of the stuff I did, and likewise she probably had to learn something that I didn't. You're going to think it's easy if you were taught it and the grading probably changed accordingly according to how hard the topics on the exam were considered to be.