10th October 2012 9:00
By Blue Tutors
Stephen McKenzie has announced his resignation from exam board AQA, stating publicly that the handling of the GCSE grade boundary changes was “morally repugnant”. The examiner left after 16 years with the exam board, and said that the grade boundary shift was the worst decision ever made by AQA.
The resignation comes as exams regulator Ofqual is considering legal challenges being brought regarding the marking of the summer GCSE papers, where students who got the same marks as their peers in the January exams, were awarded lower grades. McKenzie said that AQA had reneged on advice it has given to schools about the standards required to achieve a C grade, and said that the most vulnerable part of the student population had suffered the most as a result.
The former examiner pointed to the texts that AQA uses for its English exams – To Kill a Mockingbird, Of Mice and Men, An Inspector Calls – and said that it was disgusting that the exam board had committed the kind of social injustice that these books stand against. He said that whilst the exam board was once a fine institution, it had done massive damage to its students.