Is remarking a luxury most schools can afford?
They are simple errors but with devastating results.
In an extraordinary interview, a senior examiner from the Oxford, Cambridge and RSA examining board (OCR) has told me how he was ordered to stop checking, after he found hundreds of mistakes in already graded exam papers.
And you didn’t need A level maths to spot them either. Totals incorrectly added together and numbers wrongly copied from inside the exam paper to the front page.
Sloppiness from the markers is bad enough. The seeming unwillingness of the OCR exam board to rectify the mistakes quite another thing.
David Leitch, the exam supervisor at OCR who exposed problems in the marking system, told us he went to officials who said they’d put new checks in for future exams but it was up to schools themselves to request the company to do remarks.
But there’s a terrible unfairness here. As we reported when we broke this story last Thursday, if you’re lucky enough to be at a well resourced private school they might willingly throw back your paper for reconsideration. Indeed the school we spoke to sent 23 for remarking (22, incidentally, came back with a higher grade).
But at anywhere between £20 and £60 a paper, remarking is a luxury many schools simply can’t afford.
OCR say they have carried out checks on 1,100 of their examiners and found only a handful of students were regraded. They have terminated the contracts of four of their examiners.
Ofqual have asked for an urgent investigation into the claims made by Mr Leitch.
But is this a one off? Or evidence of a system that is in real trouble?
Martin Collier is the head of St John’s School in Leatherhead and was himself an examiner for 16 years. In evidence to the Education Select Committee at the end of last year he wrote:
“The fundamental problem within the current examination system is that the examining/awarding bodies are businesses and their primary interest is to make a profit. Perhaps the most worrying consequence has been the erosion in examining standards.”
He told the committee that the culture had fundamentally changed. In the past the emphasis was on rooting out mistakes before grades were issued. And he makes a claim David Leitch certainly wouldn’t dispute.
“The attraction to the examination boards of post results re-marks is that the parents pay and it is an opportunity for the examinations boards to make money (or at least break even).”
The Department for Education says the level of error in the case of OCR was unacceptable. It is looking again at strengthening Ofqual’s position.
Q & A: GCSE and A-level exam remarking explained
Following our investigation into an exam board covering up marking errors, Channel 4 News answers your questions about applying for a re-mark, the chances of changing your grade and how much it costs.
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