12th March 2014 9:00
By Blue Tutors
OCR have recently announced that they are the latest exam board to be at the centre of a marking scandal. Hundreds of GCSE and A’ Level papers have been remarked by the board after it was discovered that markers had been using the wrong answer code to process the papers. Many private tutors will tell you that student morale is at an all-time low after years of marking discrepancies, retakes and shifting grade boundaries. For private tutors these issues in the education system present a unique challenge. If grades can change, markers inaccurate, exams retaken or taken with a different exam board for a markedly different result, how are we to convince our students of the value of the exams they are working so hard for?
The truth is, I’m not sure we should be. The developments in our education system and the significant discrepancies over the last few years have left teachers, students and private tutors in serious doubt of the validity in the exams that students must sit. ‘It’s a game that you have to play in order to get on’ is what many teachers now tell their students. This is why students accept being entered for the same exam with different exam boards, automatically ask for remarks, and take exams early so that they can have the opportunity of taking the exam again later on. It’s hard to respect this system, and tutors will struggle to convince their students that there is intrinsic value in it.
This does not mean that tutors must take the cynical route either, helping students play the game and try to beat the system. Of course we may well help students with retakes and try to explain exam marking. But we must not teach students that there is no value here; the value is not in exams but in the education itself. It is extremely challenging to convince students of this when they have a B grade and their counterparts of equal ability are brandishing A grades. When schools and league tables and universities place so much value on the exams that are so floored, it is difficult to focus their attention. Yet me must never stop trying, because it is the education itself that holds the real value.