OCR statement and HA response

All in all, the last few months have been rough for exam boards: allegations of leaking content of future papers, heavy criticism of mechanistic and unfit GCSE exams and now news that a senior OCR examiner has been suspended for blowing the whistle on incorrect marking of examination papers. Hundreds of scripts were identified as incorrectly marked and yet the team responsible for these checks were told to stop checking and not to inform schools involved unless they had specifically asked for a re-mark.

OCR made the following statement:

"OCR deeply regrets the unacceptable mistakes which occurred in the transcribing and totalling of marks on some of its examination scripts last summer. We have processes for checking the total marks awarded to each script, but mistakes can occur in a system where examiners mark using pen and paper on hard copy scripts. We apologise unreservedly to affected schools, students and their parents; this should never have happened...Students taking exams both in the spring and this summer can be assured that mistakes of any sort will not be tolerated and we have taken the necessary measures to guard against them.

 

This news comes as no surprise to us at the Historical Association. Over the last 2 years, we have received a steady stream of comments from our members detailing issues of incorrect marking and poor service from all of the major examination boards. These comments prompted us to take a small snapshot cross-section  of commentary from our membership.

47% of those questioned used OCR as their GCSE examination board, whilst 32.5% used Edexcel for A-Level.  71% had experienced problems with marking in the last 3 years and 54% said that the problem was getting worse. A staggering 89% identified issues of inaccurate marking as an issue, whilst 44% also argued that examination papers did not match the guidance set by examination boards. 

So...how did the examination boards respond? 56% of those questioned were unhappy with the way that their issues were dealt with by examination boards, yet 86% did not bother to change their examination board following the problems that they identified. Why? We can only infer why this might be so; for the remaining 44% it may be that they were satisfied with the way they were dealt with, but for those who expressed dissatisfaction, yet still did not change board, we can only assume that this is either down to oversight/apathy on the part of the school, or worse that the examination boards as a whole hold a poor reputation for accuracy and marking  among teachers and schools that teachers felt that they would gain nothing by changing boards and that the experience would only be repeated with another board. If this is so, then rather than attempting to bury inaccuracy as this weeks' example demonstrates, perhaps it is time that at least one examination board attempted to turn this trend around...by sheer focus of competition other boards will soon follow suit. However, all the while schools continue to accept poor service without voting with their feet - the incentive to make changes will be lost and complaints will fall upon deaf ears. The current examination system is under review and the Historical Association is following this process with interest. We will report developments as they arise.