The exam system is in crisis, MPs are told
Former senior examiner warns of low standards and grade inflation
The exam system is not “fit for purpose”, has no coherence, declining professional standards and grade inflation fuelled by competition between boards, a long-serving former principal examiner has told MPs.
Martin Collier, an A-level history examiner between 1996 and 2011, said examiners needed to be better trained and paid.
“You have got to recognise what are professional standards within examining,” Mr Collier, head of the independent St John’s school in Leatherhead, Surrey, said in an outspoken appearance before the Commons education committee’s inquiry into exams. “At the moment that has been taken out of the system. It is now a jobbing job. They just put a body in front of the screen mainly now and off they go. The professional standard has been reduced and reduced and reduced.”
Mr Collier, who worked for Edexcel, said he wanted to see a single, merged exam board because it was “wrong to put children’s qualifications into the marketplace” and because competition between boards had unhealthy side effects.
“One of the reasons why grades have gone up and up is the issue of market share,” he told MPs. “Exam boards are very wary of saying, ‘This year there have been fewer A grades’.
“I have been on the inside of exam boards and heard the conversations. What the exam boards are worried about is that if they hit children hard one year and the number of top grades diminish they fear people will go elsewhere.” His comments follow claims of grade inflation by respected academics giving evidence to Ofqual’s review of exam standards this term.
Another head, Robert Pritchard from St Mary’s Catholic High in Menston, West Yorkshire, told the MPs that pupils worked harder and were better prepared, but he had noticed a “discrepancy in the level of questions a number of years ago and now.”
Mr Pritchard was also concerned that increased work from the modularisation of exams and controlled assessment was “ruining young people’s lives”. “Examination has overtaken teaching,” the head said. “A young person’s life is now constant assessment. It is a massive machine that has overtaken everything and the people that are benefiting are the exam boards.”
David Burton, deputy head of St Michael’s CofE High in Crosby, Liverpool, questioned the boards’ value for money, telling the committee they were relying more on teacher assessment while their fees rocketed. “We are paying to enter a student into an examination and doing most of the work ourselves,” he said. “We are paying more money in and getting much less service back.”
Commenting on the introduction of teacher assessment, Mr Collier said: “I was on a QCA (the former Qualifications and Curriculum Authority) body where the discussions were held; for some exam boards they actually wanted teacher assessment because it was cheaper… Over the last 10 to 15 years, in history in particular, the boards got rid of a review process which happened after scripts were marked and before results were produced.”
Mr Collier and other senior examiners would spend days together sifting through scripts to find where the problems lay. He said the process ended because of the introduction of online marking and because it was “really expensive”.
Now the emphasis on finding errors has shifted to schools, he said. Exam boards have refuted his comments, with an Edexcel spokesman insisting that all its examiners had to meet strict criteria, and were monitored and given continuous support. Technology made marking more efficient and reliable, the board insisted. This is unlikely, however, to satisfy the system’s critics.
Textbook example
Martin Collier wrote a long series of A-level history textbooks, including some published as official texts for the Edexcel and OCR boards. But now he has warned MPs of the dangers of this “badging” of textbooks by awarding bodies.
Many have already suggested that such textbooks encourage teaching to the test, but Mr Collier went further and argued they could actually narrow the content of the exam.
“The danger is that you get into a cycle whereby the chief examiner feels he or she has got to set questions which come out of the (badged) book so what you are doing is not actually providing a textbook but providing a coursebook,” he told MPs.
“Now, if you think that A-levels and other academic disciplines are about broadening the mind and reading around the subject and all that other sort of thing, those things are mitigated against by these branded books.”
Original headline: The exam system is in crisis, MPs are told
Comment (4)
A few weeks ago Gove was openly stating that he wanted just one examination board; and he wants himself as the top of the exam system food-chain.
Suddenly we have a well planned assault on the exam boards with this article & the accusations of 'cheating' against Welsh-Board officials on their how-to-pass-GCSE-history course.
Given that Gove has grabbed more power within Education since May 2010 than Joseph Stalin every did. Given that he is effectively in charge of all academies & free schools; having removed any local control you have to ask..........Do we really want Gove running exams as well?
A present we have 4 boards, including the Welsh one. Back in the good-old-days of the 1980's we had loads of them. If changes are needed we need to break up the boards into MORE boards. If we allow Gove to take charge of a single exam board there will be NO INNOVATION, NO TEACHER LED INITIATIVES & ONE SIZE FITS ALL dictated to all pupils by the top 1% of pupils ability range.
Mr Collier is another Gove stooge. His attempts to ridicule teacher assessment fly against a plethra of educational research which indicated that teacher assessment wasn't introduced to cut-costs & gave dimensions to assessment unavailable to traditional exams. If Mr Collier appears with actual EVIDENCE instead of his Gove orientated opinions and he stopped claiming a 'crisis' he may he something to add to the debate.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
16:20
9 December, 2011
Brooke Bond
So, MANY years, after MANY people have been saying this, MPs are being told. Funny thing is I'm sure they have heard it all before. It's just that because it's not what they want to hear they don't listen or act on it.
Bottom line. GCSE and A-Levels are a bit of a joke. Only today (and not for the first time) I told my students how much more demanding IB is. It's like taking 6 A-Levels (with three at a high standard) plus several other things thrown in as well. Doing well in IB Diploma IS an achievement, and something students really can be proud of.
Of course, this isn't what you people in the UK want to hear.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
16:30
9 December, 2011
David Getling
If you want to SEE a right-wing 'plot' in action go to the Telegraph website http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ then type 'education' into their search engine clicking on 'Education homepage'. You will find over 30 articles written on the 7th, 8th & 9th December concerning how BAD our education system is. I haven't sen the right wing press fly into action likethis since they hid Camerons £140,000 land deal with a lobby firm last month!
For information the articles are entitled:
Exam chief: "you don’t have to teach a lot"
Exam boards could be closed down over cheating revelations
The exams system needs turning on its head
Boasts 'undermine exam system'
Exam boards: teachers' reaction
We now work in exam factories, say teachers
Cambridge exams 'stretch pupils furthest'
Welsh exam board 'best for improving poor results'
Commentary: Outrage, but no one is surprised
Edexcel went from charity to £1bn business
Watchdog Ofqual faces questions over exam standards
Chief examiner promotes her course as easiest of the lot
The profiteers have failed our exam system
'Easy' exams boasts caught on film
How the exam boards 'compete to be easier'
High exam results indicate a poor education
Exam chief boasts: 'you don't have to teach a lot' for our tests
'Easy' exam boast caught on film
Exam regulator: cheating will not be tolerated
How to stamp out exam corruption
Exam boards: examiners suspended in 'corrupt practices' row
Exam boards: two examiners suspended after 'cheating' claims
Examiners in 'last chance saloon after cheating claims'
Papers could be pulled and re-written, warns Ofqual
Record number of A-levels marked up amid university scramble
Exam boards: profiles
How exam system became international money-spinner
Seminars where teachers are told what will come up in exams
Graphic: exam board winners and losers
Cheating: how examiners tip off teachers to help pupils pass
'We're cheating, we're telling you the question cycle'
Telegraph View: Exams that fail the test
All that in 3 days! THAT is a significant amount of invested time & effort. In fact it occupies more time investment than the MPs expenses articles over a similar period in 2009/2010.
What is obvious here is that TORY CENTRAL OFFICE hand-in-hand with the editorship of the Telegraph is preparing the ground by causing as much moral outrage and right wing panic as possible so that Gove can justify saving the day by bringing all exams under his control. Comments like Michael Gove orders official inquiry as examiners suspended just fuel the idea that there is a 'problem'; there isn't.
I was a schools exam officer in the 1980's and again in the late 1990's ealy 2000's. THIS instance which caused these two examiners to be suspended is nothing new; but filming it is. It isn't cheating. The exam boards do a 'good' job, not great but adequate, & more exam boards (not less) would do things better.
Ask yourself:
1. Could a Gove board have stopped this so-called 'cheating'? No.
2. Would a single Gove board stop exam errors & mistakes in printing? No, in fact a single error would affect 100% of pupils instead of 30%.
Then why do we NEED a single Gove board?
-----------------------------------------------------------
Why isn't the TES editorship investigating Gove, the right-wing press & the current attack on exam boards? I suggest Gove also has links with the TES!
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
17:16
9 December, 2011
Brooke Bond
David,
GCSEs & A-levels are very well respected qualifications. Being a Tory must be difficult; how do you manage to live a lie 24/07?
Quote: 'I told my students how much more demanding IB is. It's like taking 6 A-Levels (with three at a high standard) plus several other things thrown in as well. Doing well in IB Diploma IS an achievement, and something students really can be proud of.'
Your comment about 6 A-levels isn't matched by UCAS points or statistics on IB pass rates. I'm afraid YOU are the joke here by saying that.
Look at MEI A-level maths. A top performing candidate can complete 21 units of maths gaining 3.5 A-levels. Can you get anywhere near that on IB? No.
IB 'single' maths may have more content than A-level single maths but IB has little 'applications' maths and hardly anyone in the UK takes IB Further Maths.
Doing well in IB Diploma IS an achievement; I can't say it isn't, but an A* in A-level maths & A* in A-level Further Maths says you are a BETTER mathematician. Ask the universities! Look at their offers for maths degree courses. You are wrong.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
17:25
9 December, 2011
Brooke Bond