11th March 2011 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Today I heard from a delighted student that she had gone from a D grade to an A grade after retaking her paper. Without question this is wonderful news, and she deserves credit for the hard work she put in trying to improve her mark. However, I believe her work deserved the A grade all along. I also think that, much as students can improve their results through intensive study, D grades do not become A grades, and A grade students do not get D grades without there being something amiss.The fact is that we have an exam system in which excellent students can articulately address the question at hand, and still do very poorly, if they fail to meet the increasingly narrow assessment objectives required by the syllabus.
It is common knowledge that the increase in exams taken and exminers trained has lead to more standardisation and a narrower mark scheme. We should also consider the benefits of such a system to exam boards. The more specific the requirements, the more teachers and students are going to turn to them for help in ensuring that the best results are achieved. Expensive handbooks and revision guides are now part of the normal routine of the exam process and schools and students spend large amounts of money each year finding out how their exam board wants them to answer questions. Further, exam boards charge students to remark papers, even when the marks of a frighting number of papers are dramatically altered and it is clear a mistake was made on their part.
Another student was very pleased to hear that her mark had gone up from a C to an A after a re-mark, as had a considerable number of her peers. There was charge associated with each student to cover the cost of the remark, and one can have little confidence that either batch of marks accurately reflects the students' ability.
The truth of our current system and the increasing marketisation of education is that exam boards are playing games with students' futures, and they are making a lot of money doing so. A good student is a good student, no matter whether an exam board gives them a D one week or an A the next.