23rd June 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
We recently published a news article on our site about examination boards making mistakes on exams that were actually sat by thousands of students in the UK. It’s difficult to understand how someone outside of education would see those mistakes, maybe the popular opinion is that they were minor, and it’s to be expected, but from a tutor’s point of view, it really is a difficult thing to comprehend.
When tutoring a student, our tutors will often come across mistakes, sometimes in a new edition of a textbook, and sometimes in a practice exam paper (one which wasn’t intended to be sat as a public exam). However, it’s inconceivable to most tutors, to imagine that a mistake could be left in an exam which could go a long way to determining a student’s future.
You may be sat there wondering why an exam mistake is such a heinous crime. Surely anyone can make a mistake? This is true, but it’s unacceptable when you consider the checks that should go into an exam that is to be sat by students for their A levels or GCSEs. Surely the examining boards should ask a handful of academics to complete each exam. Simply asking 5 Oxbridge graduates to spend an hour on each paper would quickly identify any mistakes.
One claim was that a mistake was due to the printing company which was used to print an exam, which is almost laughable: did no one think to check the papers against the original when they came back from printing?
The examining boards say that students won’t be penalised for mistakes on papers, that everyone will be awarded full marks for a question which contained a mistake. This seems strange for a couple of reasons. Firstly it assumes that all students will deal with a mistake in the same way, which we all know isn’t true. Those with a tendency to become anxious will be affected much more than others, so those with a cooler head, maybe those for whom the exam is less important, will tend to do better. Secondly, a student who doesn’t notice the mistake, maybe someone who is less able in the subject, will not be affected, and will do relatively better than a more able student who does notice the mistake.
Also, we’re constantly told that exams are designed to specifically test each aspect of the required skills for that qualification, so surely every question is important, and nothing should be brushed under the carpet and not used to measure a student’s proficiency. One of the recent mistakes accounted for 11% (one ninth) of the whole paper. If we’re going to award full marks for this mistake, why not make exams shorter? How much material could be removed from each exam before we’re no longer happy that it’s an adequate test?
This may come across as a criticism of the examining boards, and not very constructive criticism at that. To be honest, that’s probably what it is. After the initial mistakes, it’s difficult to know how to resolve the problems created, maybe awarding full marks for the mistakes is the only solution, but that certainly doesn’t make it fair or absolve the examining board. The real criticism is the initial mistake, especially when it’s such an easy thing to get right.