January 26, 1983

Weakened by sagging demand and lower oil prices, the Exxon Corporation's net income rose 6.9 percent in the fourth quarter, while that of the Standard Oil Company of California skidded 25.6 percent, the companies reported yesterday. Both had lower earnings for the full year, and cited in part the costs resulting from their obligation to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia at that country's benchmark price of $34 a barrel for Saudi Light crude at a time when others were selling similar crude oil at lower prices. Exxon and Socal are partners in the Arabian American Oil Company, or Aramco, which produces Saudi Arabia's oil and markets most of it. The four American companies in the partnership - Exxon, Standard Oil, Texaco and Mobil - are committed to purchase Saudi oil at $34, although the price of Saudi Light oil on the spot, or noncontract market has fallen to as low as $28 a barrel. The companies process the Saudi crude and market the resulting petroleum products. Profits have been squeezed by falling retail prices for these products.

The day belonged to Karl Lagerfeld, though there was plenty of other excitement on the couture fashion scene as the spring and summer openings here continued. The German-born designer, who has been living in Paris since he was in his teens, had dared to tackle the House of Chanel - a national monument with which one does not trifle. Mr. Lagerfeld didn't trifle. Chanel clothes are the most long-lived of the 20th century. Gabrielle Chanel's styles began attracting attention after World War I and have continued ever since. They seem to have been frozen in time, but changes have not been received kindly.

New York State's Education Commissioner said today that his department was beginning to study a plan to start children in school at age 4 and have them graduate after completing the 11th grade. Under the plan outlined by the Commissioner, Gordon M. Ambach, children would enter kindergarten at 4 and the first grade at 5, a year earlier than the present system. They would graduate from high school, presumably at age 16, and then could go on to college. If enacted, the plan, which would apply to public and private schools, would begin no sooner than the mid-1980's and would be phased in over 10 years, Mr. Ambach said.

International Revised Roman Catholic canon laws were signed by Pope John Paul II. They incorporate many of the changes brought about by the Second Vatican Council, the historic ecumenical meeting that was held in the 1960's under the auspices of Pope John XXIII. The code will not officially take effect until Nov. 27, but most of the changes have been put into practice by Roman Catholics around the world. (Page A1, Column 3.) A Turk wanted in Italy for complicity in the shooting of Pope John Paul II says he has never met the man who shot the Pope in 1981. But the suspect, Bekir Celenk, said in Sofia, Bulgaria, that he had been in Bulgaria at the same time that Mehmet Ali Agca, the Turk convicted of shooting the Pope, was reportedly there. Unconfirmed Italian newspaper reports have said that Mr. Celenk offered Mr. Agca $1.25 million in German marks on behalf of the Bulgarian secret service to shoot the Pope. (A1:1.)

As the recession winds down, the statistical indicators are telling a tale of an economy that, broadly speaking, suffered less in the period since July 1981 than during the 1974-75 recession, the worst since World War II. But by some narrower measures, the toll that the latest downturn has taken on an already battered economy has been much worse. From the fourth quarter of 1973 to the end of the first quarter of 1975 -the duration of the earlier recession -the inflation-adjusted gross national product dropped 4.9 percent. The comparable figure for the recession that began in July 1981 and that economists now assume ended in December is a decline of 2.9 percent. Industrial production, which sank 15.1 percent in the 1974-75 downturn, has fallen a more modest 12.5 percent this time.