Side issue: one thing that's got worse is cases of asthma. In primary school, I was in a class which had two asthmatics in it, one of which was me; this, I understood, was unusual. Nowadays, a primary-school teacher is surprised to find there's *no* asthmatics in a class. But at least these days having an asthma attack is no longer seen as malingering, even by PE teachers.

Discussion on why this might be is probably best done under a different heading. We now return you to the main subject of this thread.