4th October 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A report published this week by the HMC, a group of leading independent school head teachers, criticises the current exam system for forcing bright students to ‘dumb down’ their answers in order to fit within narrow mark schemes. The HMC, further to the challenge over GCSE marking, said that the whole system was marked so unfairly that bright pupils would struggle to do well if their answers fell outside the narrow boundaries.
In a letter to the Education Secretary Michael Gove, the group warned that the new baccalaureate would be like ‘building a house on sand’ if the underlying quality of the marking was not addressed. They criticised the current system, pointing out that students must learn the right ‘buzz words’ to include in an answer, because markers cannot accommodate an original answer.
General Secretary to the HMC William Richardson said “the most depressing thing for a teacher with a high calibre of pupil is to coach the most able pupils on dumbing down their answers to get an A*”. The group also highlighted the fact that students they considered to be of a similar calibre achieved wildly different results year on year, demonstrating that the system is unreliable and unfair.