27th May 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A frequent discussion with people who aren’t very involved in education is: why are there so many examination boards? It’s not uncommon for parents to assume that every student in the UK does the same exams, and that the examining board is ‘GCSE’ or ‘A-level’.
Of course, this isn’t the case, but can anyone really give a reason for it? When someone says “wouldn’t it be easier for everyone to do the same exam so that we can compare GCSE, A-level or degree level exam results without bias?” can you really say that they’re wrong? It could be argued that different countries ‘should’ have different exams, maybe even different areas of one country, but what could the reason be for a school to be taking an Edexcel English exam, and it’s neighbouring school to be taking an OCR English exam?
If you’re looking for the reasons why GCSEs and A-levels are becoming easier (despite the claims that they’re not) then look no further than competition among examining boards. If schools think that their students will receive better grades in AQA’s Maths exam, then they won’t enter those students for Edexcel’s Maths exam. This creates competition for examining boards to make their exams slightly easier than any other board, and, over time, makes all the exams easier.
On exam for all students would make selection for university places much fairer by allowing each university to compare students’ exam results without needing to adjust for slight differences in difficulty.
Nowhere is apparent equality more laughable than in university exams. ‘Technically’ exams at universities are supposed to be of equal difficulty, so a first from Cambridge and UCL represents the same academic ability as a first from Luton or Thames Valley. Of course, employers know that this isn’t the case, but there is still a certain amount of translation to be done, and it means that a stigma is attached to student results of improving universities, and those students might not get the credit that they deserve.
A worrying fact is that many public sector jobs, such as teaching, require a minimum university grade, but doesn’t take into account the difficulty of university exams, so someone receiving a 2-2 from Oxford won’t be able to apply for a job that a 2-1 graduate from Anglia Ruskin can apply for. Given those two universities entry standards, this seems completely illogical.