20th May 2010 9:00
By Blue Tutors
There are a number of examination boards in the UK, and most tutors will quickly form opinions about each of them. The differences between the boards is a major concern, and it’s worrying that some students will receive A grades in exams that are clearly easier than the exams other students take, and yet the exams are viewed as being of the same level.
However, although the exam difficulties are a general concern, it’s the available materials that will make tutors form their primary opinion of each examination board. The three main boards in the UK are Edexcel, OCR and AQA. They each have good and bad points which a tutor will quickly discover.
The materials that a tutor will want are syllabuses (often termed specifications), and past exam papers. Each board makes the syllabuses relatively to find and download. This is really helpful for tutors, because they don’t have a school to guide them through each lesson, and explain what should be taught. Obviously every tutor will know their subject very well, but they also have to keep up-to-date with new syllabuses, and the boards clearly label the revised specifications, and when they will first be examined.
Tutors will be tearing their hair out about the availability of past papers though. They are not so readily available on the examination boards’ websites, and create a problem for a tutor who has no access to an examination centre which can download past papers as they please. Some boards which don’t provide past papers do provide ‘sample papers’, which have never been set to students, but are intended to replicate the exams that have been. However, the actual past papers undergo much more scrutiny, and the sample papers often contain mistakes.
Making past papers freely available to everyone seems to make sense - there isn’t really a downside for anyone. The sad truth is that the boards have decided to start charging people to download past papers, and this is why they restrict access. It’s understandable from a business point of view, but seems unjustified from a student’s or a tutor’s perspective.