Have the UK's standardized lit tests been dumbed down?

The Telegraph seems to think so:

The new boards such as AQA and Edexel, which set the syllabuses for both GSCE and A-level, are markedly biased towards a narrow range of modern authors, especially when it comes to poetry. The hugely influential AQA GCSE Anthology, which students use in place of individual poets’ collections, has a section called English Literature containing Seamus Heaney, Carol Ann Duffy, Gillian Clarke and the king of them all, Simon Armitage. (The pre-1914 bank of poetry at the back is rarely touched. An examiner’s report from 2009 states that Tennyson’s “‘Ulysses’ put in one or two appearances among candidates this year – rare sightings indeed!”) Heaney et al are good poets but the works selected here resemble puzzles with pat solutions. Why not the more adventurous Paul Muldoon or Alice Oswald? Or Hughes or Larkin or Eliot?