Being a humanity
subject, it’s also not as simple as providing mark schemes and checking exam
scripts against that,” he said. Wood said the current cohort of GCSE and
A-level state school students had been enormously disadvantaged by the pandemic
and some had missed a huge amount of teaching time. “The thought of them
potentially having somebody marking their paper who’s not well qualified to do
that – it feels to me like we’re adding potentially more disadvantage on to
more disadvantage. And they deserve better.” An economics A-level teacher who
works as a “team lead” examiner for AQA and wished to remain anonymous, said he
was worried it might be possible for wrongly marked scripts to slip through
AQA’s “strict” quality control system: “There are checks in place and they are
good – but you don’t check every single bit of marking.” An AQA spokesperson said
this marker did not have knowledge of the pilot’s tests or monitoring processes
and was jumping to the wrong conclusions. Joe Kinnaird, a religious studies
GCSE teacher and AQA examiner, said even if university students passed all of
AQA’s standardisation and quality control tests, he does not think they will be
capable of marking exams well. “Ultimately, I think you have to be a classroom
teacher. It actually undermines the teaching profession to assume that people
who are not qualified teachers are able to mark exam papers.” Sarah Hannafin, a
policy adviser at the National Association of Head Teachers, said when young
people took an exam, their expectation was that markers were “experienced,
serious teachers”. With confidence already “quite rocky”, due to what happened
with the exams last summer, she thinks it is vital young people and their
parents feel they can rely on the exam-marking process. “I’d go so far as to
say I think it would be a mistake for them [AQA] to go ahead with it.” Ofqual,
the exams regulator, said exam boards must ensure markers were competent. “What
matters most is that markers are conscientious and follow the exam board’s mark
schemes,” a spokesperson said. “Students can ask for the marking of their paper
to be reviewed if they believe an error has been made.” In response to the
criticisms, a spokesperson for AQA said the pilot would in no way disadvantage
this year’s students or affect the accuracy of their results. How can you
design fair, yet challenging, exams that accurately gauge student learning?
Here are some general guidelines. There are also many resources, in print and
on the web, that offer strategies for designing particular kinds of exams, such
as multiple-choice. Choose appropriate item types for your objectives. Should
you assign essay questions on your exams? Problem sets? Multiple-choice
questions? It depends on your learning objectives. For example, if you want
students to articulate or justify an economic argument, then multiple-choice
questions are a poor choice because they do not require students to articulate
anything. However, multiple-choice questions (if well-constructed) might
effectively assess students’ ability to recognize a logical economic argument
or to distinguish it from an illogical one. If your goal is for students to
match technical terms to their definitions, essay questions may not be as
efficient a means of assessment as a simple matching task. There is no single
best type of exam question: the important thing is that the questions reflect your
learning objectives. Highlight how the exam aligns with course objectives.
Identify which course objectives the exam addresses (e.g., “This exam assesses
your ability to use sociological terminology appropriately, and to apply the
principles we have learned in the course to date”). This helps students see how
the components of the course align, reassures them about their ability to
perform well (assuming they have done the required work), and activates
relevant experiences and knowledge from earlier in the course. Write
instructions that are clear, explicit, and unambiguous. Make sure that students
know exactly what you want them to do. Be more explicit about your expectations
than you may think is necessary.
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Otherwise, students may make assumptions that
run them into trouble. For example, they may assume – perhaps based on
experiences in another course – that an in-class exam is open book or that they
can collaborate with classmates on a take-home exam, which you may not allow.
Preferably, you should articulate these expectations to students before they
take the exam as well as in the exam instructions. You also might want to
explain in your instructions how fully you want students to answer questions
(for example, to specify if you want answers to be written in paragraphs or
bullet points or if you want students to show all steps in problem-solving.)
Write instructions that preview the exam. Students’ test-taking skills may not
be very effective, leading them to use their time poorly during an exam. Instructions
can prepare students for what they are about to be asked by previewing the
format of the exam, including question type and point value (e.g., there will
be 10 multiple-choice questions, each worth two points, and two essay
questions, each worth 15 points). This helps students use their time more
effectively during the exam. Word questions clearly and simply. Avoid complex
and convoluted sentence constructions, double negatives, and idiomatic language
that may be difficult for students, especially international students, to
understand. Also, in multiple-choice questions, avoid using absolutes such as
“never” or “always,” which can lead to confusion. Enlist a colleague or TA to
read through your exam. Sometimes instructions or questions that seem perfectly
clear to you are not as clear as you believe. Thus, it can be a good idea to
ask a colleague or TA to read through (or even take) your exam to make sure
everything is clear and unambiguous. Think about how long it will take students
to complete the exam. When students are under time pressure, they may make
mistakes that have nothing to do with the extent of their learning. Thus,
unless your goal is to assess how students perform under time pressure, it is
important to design exams that can be reasonably completed in the time
allotted. One way to determine how long an exam will take students to complete
is to take it yourself and allow students triple the time it took you – or
reduce the length or difficulty of the exam. Consider the point value of different
question types. The point value you ascribe to different questions should be in
line with their difficulty, as well as the length of time they are likely to
take and the importance of the skills they assess. It is not always easy when
you are an expert in the field to determine how difficult a question will be
for students, so ask yourself: How many subskills are involved? Have students
answered questions like this before, or will this be new to them? Are there
common traps or misconceptions that students may fall into when answering this
question? Needless to say, difficult and complex question types should be
assigned higher point values than easier, simpler question types. Similarly,
questions that assess pivotal knowledge and skills should be given higher point
values than questions that assess less critical knowledge.
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Think ahead to how
you will score students’ work. When assigning point values, it is useful to
think ahead to how you will score students’ answers. Will you give partial
credit if a student gets some elements of an answer right? If so, you might
want to break the desired answer into components and decide how many points you
would give a student for correctly answering each. Thinking this through in
advance can make it considerably easier to assign partial credit when you do
the actual grading. For example, if a short answer question involves four
discrete components, assigning a point value that is divisible by four makes
grading easier. Creating objective test questions Creating objective test
questions – such as multiple-choice questions – can be difficult, but here are
some general rules to remember that complement the strategies in the previous
section. Write objective test questions so that there is one and only one best
answer. Word questions clearly and simply, avoiding double negatives, idiomatic
language, and absolutes such as “never” or “always.” Test only a single idea in
each item. Make sure wrong answers (distractors) are plausible. Incorporate
common student errors as distractors. Make sure the position of the correct
answer (e.g., A, B, C, D) varies randomly from item to item. Include from three
to five options for each item. Make sure the length of response items is
roughly the same for each question. Keep the length of response items short.
Make sure there are no grammatical clues to the correct answer (e.g., the use
of “a” or “an” can tip the test-taker off to an answer beginning with a vowel
or consonant). Format the exam so that response options are indented and in
column form. In multiple choice questions, use positive phrasing in the stem,
avoiding words like “not” and “except.” If this is unavoidable, highlight the
negative words (e.g., “Which of the following is NOT an example of…?”). Avoid
overlapping alternatives. Avoid using “All of the above” and “None of the
above” in responses. (In the case of “All of the above,” students only need to
know that two of the options are correct to answer the question. Conversely,
students only need to eliminate one response to eliminate “All of the above” as
an answer. Similarly, when “None of the above” is used as the correct answer
choice, it tests students’ ability to detect incorrect answers, but not whether
they know the correct answer.) plans for next year’s A-level and GCSE cohorts
(Students in England to get notice of topics after Covid disruption, 3
December). They do nothing to address the fundamental weakness in our education
system, which is the underachievement of disadvantaged pupils compared with
those from advantaged backgrounds. The pandemic has widened the differences
between the two groups. Pupils in private schools have much better
distance-learning provision if they are unable to attend. Advantaged pupils in
state schools have access to computers and broadband and to places where they
can study at home. The government’s promise to ensure all pupils have access to
distance learning is another broken one. The measures announced – advance
warning of topics, taking aids into exams, contingency papers for those
suffering any disruption during the exam period – will all favour advantaged
pupils. John Gaskin Bainton,
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East Riding of Yorkshire The secretary of state is putting forward
changes to the 2021 examinations in the vain attempt to make them “fair”
despite the inevitable impossibility of doing so given the variations in
students’ Covid-related exposure to teaching and learning. The professional
associations seem to have accepted this unsatisfactory fudged situation. Do
they not have faith in their members’ professional judgments? Why attempt the
impossible and possibly have to U-turn eventually, so creating yet more stress
for teachers and students? Why not rely, as in 2020, on moderated teacher
assessments, given that universities and colleges have not raised any outcry about
teaching the students assessed in that way? One answer: this rightwing
government does not trust teachers and is obsessed with the “GCSE and A-level
gold standards” despite a lack of professional consensus on the reliability of
externally set, unseen, timed examinations as the sole means of assessing
students’ performance. Prof Colin Richards Former HM inspector of schools Throughout the examination results fiasco
earlier this year, the education secretary parroted the same mantra that
end-of-course exams are the best system of measuring learning. He frequently
added that this view was “widely accepted”. He has never told us why he holds
this view or to which evidence he is referring. In fact, there is considerable
evidence stretching back 40 years that various forms of continuous assessment
and coursework give a better and fairer guide to pupils’ abilities. At a time
when so many pupils have had severely disrupted education and those in deprived
areas are likely to have suffered most from lack of continuity, surely it is
sensible to let hard evidence take precedence over political dogma. Ever since
a Conservative government under Margaret Thatcher started denigrating the
concept of teacher-assessed coursework, until Michael Gove finally abolished
GCSE coursework in 2013, there has been a common thread to such attacks, namely
the unfounded myth that teachers cannot be trusted. England’s exam regulator
Ofqual was riven by uncertainty and in-fighting with the Department for
Education before this year’s A-level and GCSE results, with the government
publishing new policies in the middle of an Ofqual board meeting that had been
called to discuss them. Minutes of Ofqual’s board meetings reveal the regulator
was aware that its process for assessing A-level and GCSE grades was unreliable
before results were published, even as Ofqual was publicly portraying its
methods as reliable and fair.
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The minutes also show repeated interventions by
the education secretary, Gavin Williamson, and the DfE, with the two bodies clashing
over Williamson’s demand that Ofqual allow pupils to use the results of mock
exams as grounds for appeal against their official grades. Williamson told
about flaws in A-level model two weeks before results Read more Ofqual’s board
held 23 emergency meetings from April onwards. As the publication of A-level
results on 13 August drew near the board met in marathon sessions, some running
until late at night, as controversy erupted over the grades awarded by its
statistical model being used to replace exams. Williamson wanted the regulator
to allow much wider grounds for appeal, and on 11 August Ofqual’s board heard
that the education secretary had suggested pupils should instead be awarded
their school-assessed grades or be allowed to use mock exam results if they
were higher. Ofqual offered to replace its grades with “unregulated” unofficial
result certificates based on school or exam centre assessments, but that was
rejected by Williamson. Negotiations over the use of mock exams continued into
the evening of 11 August. In the middle of the day’s second emergency meeting
the board discovered that the DfE had gone over its head with an announcement
that “was widely reported in the media while this meeting was still in
session”. The meeting ended close to midnight. During the controversy, Ofqual
published and then abruptly retracted policies on the use of mock exam grades
the weekend after A-level results were published, with three separate emergency
meetings held that Sunday. Shortly after, Ofqual backed down and scrapped its
grades in favour of those assessed by schools for both A-levels and GCSEs. The
minutes show that Ofqual had serious doubts about the statistical process it
used to award grades, with a meeting on 4 August hearing that the board was “very
concerned about the prospect of some students, in particular so-called
outliers, being awarded unreliable results”. Advertisement The board’s members
“accepted reluctantly that there was no valid and defensible way to deal with
this pre-results”. But despite the board’s doubts, Ofqual officials continued
to insist in public that its results would be reliable. Roger Taylor, the
Ofqual chair, wrote in a newspaper article on 9 August that “students will get
the best estimate that can be made of the grade they would have achieved if
exams had gone ahead.” Ofqual also issued a statement on 10 August saying it
wanted to “reassure students that the arrangements in place this summer are the
fairest possible”. 'Plan B' for rigorous mock exams to avoid rerun of A-level
fiasco Read more Separate details of meetings held between the DfE and Ofqual –
obtained under a freedom of information request by Schools Week – show that
Williamson met Ofqual twice in the two days before A-level results came out.
Williamson held 10 meetings with Ofqual to discuss the 2020 results from March
until A-levels were published on 13 August, while the schools minister, Nick
Gibb, attended 16 meetings. The records also show that DfE officials held 55
meetings with Ofqual specifically to discuss the summer’s exam results.
