Stick a pin in...!

The recently created Ofqual, whose job is to police exam standards, has come out with a report condemning GCSE science papers as failing to stretch able pupils - in other words, just too easy. Certainly some of the questions being quoted in the press do seem to be juvenile at best, but what is even more of a problem, it seems to me, is the use of multiple choice questions, because it stops you having to really think and work the question out. You know that you are being given the right answer - it's just a matter of identifying it from the choices on offer. And even if you had no knowledge of the subject at all, and if every question had four multiple choice answers, then simply choosing your answers at random would give you a fair chance of ending up with a score of around 25%. Are multiple choice questions used because it makes it easier for the markers perhaps?