“Soft healers make festering wounds.” It is an old saying, but in education we sometimes seem to forget it. It sits uneasily with the idea of high expectations. And no one really says it out loud, certainly not today, but what if we lowered the bar, not out of laziness but out of understanding for the learner? It might lead to fewer students repeating a year, less frustration, and more motivation. It sounds reasonable, and to some extent it is, because no one wants students to disengage because the system is too harsh. Yet, as so often in education, there is an important nuance to consider when thinking about lenient grading effects, and the old saying turns out to be more relevant than we might like.

A recent working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, titled Easy A’s, Less Pay, takes a closer look at what happens when students systematically receive higher grades than their performance would justify. The researchers, led by Jeffrey T. Denning, follow students not only in the short term but also through their later schooling and into the labour market. What makes their analysis particularly interesting is that they do not treat “lenient grading” as a single, uniform practice. Instead, they distinguish between different types of leniency.

On the one hand, there is general leniency: teachers who give higher grades across the board. We set the bar simply a bit lower. On the other hand, there is a more specific form of leniency: pushing students just over the passing threshold, turning a fail into a pass. This may seem like a small difference, but it turns out to matter a great deal.

When students are taught by teachers who are generally more lenient in their grading, a consistent pattern emerges. Their later test scores are lower. Their chances of graduating decrease slightly. They are less likely to enrol in further education and, ultimately, they earn less. These effects are not dramatic at the individual level, but they are robust and accumulate over time. A plausible explanation is that grades do not only provide feedback; they also function as signals. If that signal is systematically too positive, the incentive to invest effort weakens, and part of the learning gain disappears.

At the same time, the study shows that leniency at the margin between passing and failing can have different effects. Students who are helped just enough to pass are more likely to stay on track, less likely to repeat a year, and more likely to graduate. These effects are especially visible among lower-performing students. For them, a single failing grade can make the difference between falling behind and moving forward, and moving forward means continuing to learn and to access opportunities.

This is where the real tension lies. General leniency appears to harm students in the long run, while targeted leniency at critical thresholds can help, particularly for more vulnerable learners. The problem is that these two forms of leniency are often treated as if they were the same. So, reducing the debate to slogans such as “we need to be stricter” or “we need to motivate students”.

This research makes clear that grading practices are not a minor detail. They are a powerful part of the learning process itself. Small shifts in how we assign grades can have consequences that persist for years. This does not call for an ideological stance, but for precision and awareness. Not every form of leniency is problematic, but not every form is harmless either.

Good intentions are not enough. Helping students pass can be meaningful, but systematically lowering standards for everyone is something else entirely. It may feel better today, but students may pay the price tomorrow.