After reading about all the benefits and advantages gained, it just goes to show that the stress, pulling my hair out was all worth it in the long run. I have found my strengths and weaknesses, applying them to where I am now. I am starting to realise that the age old saying “school is the best days of your life” could actually be true…Guide to School Examinations for Parents and Students Whether you are thinking of pursuing higher studies or planning for your future career, it is likely that you will be competing in a global market. This intense competition means universities and employers expect candidates to have a solid educational foundation, demonstrated by recognizable and renowned qualifications. UK qualifications provide this recognition. With more than 50 years of experience in administering school exams worldwide, the British Council works in partnership with UK awarding bodies, Cambridge International Examinations & Edexcel International to deliver UK qualifications on their behalf in Pakistan. We create opportunity for nearly a half a million people every year worldwide to achieve their life goals by obtaining UK qualifications. British Council offers its services from offices in Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi and has a network of over 500 associated schools. It conducts exams at more than 100 venues throughout Pakistan. UK school qualifications are split into two levels. General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE), International GCSE (IGCSE) or Ordinary Level (O Level) qualifications are taken at around the age of 16. The General Certificate of Education Advanced Level (A Level) or International A Level qualifications are typically taken at 18. If you want to know more about the Schools Examination, please download the Guide to School Examination for Parents and Students. University students are being recruited to mark some GCSE and A-level papers this summer, the Guardian has learned. AQA, the UK’s largest provider of academic qualifications, is inviting “postgraduates and undergraduates who have completed their first year of studies” in theology, philosophy and economics to undergo assessments in January and February, as part of a new pilot scheme. “Those who are successful will have the opportunity to join our community of examiners,” the job advertisements state. The students are being recruited “with the view to marking ... exams in the summer of 2021”. Two adverts have appeared on the King’s College London careers and vacancy website, under the headings “GCSE religious studies examiner” and “A-level economics examiner”. One says: “We are seeking theology, religion and philosophy experts to mark our GCSE exams ... If successful, you will be able to mark the Christianity paper from our GCSE [religious studies] specification.” The other advert reveals AQA is looking for “economics experts” to mark “either paper 1 or paper 2” of its A-level economics exam. All of these papers include long-form essay questions. The GCSE Christianity paper can determine half of a candidate’s religious studies GCSE grade while each A-level economics paper is usually worth a third of an A-level. An ad seeking students to help mark the Christianity paper in GCSE religious studies An ad seeking students to help mark the Christianity paper in GCSE religious studies. “I would be concerned about the lack of experience of these young people in this marking experiment at any time,” said Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union. “But this year, when our students are going to need fairness in their exams more than any other, because of the difficulties of the pandemic, I don’t think this is the right year to carry out this experiment.” He added: “We’re talking about religious studies and economics, where there could be more questions of judgment than on some other papers. It really doesn’t seem sensible.” Helen Webb, AQA’s resourcing and talent manager, said the board was doing a “very small and very controlled pilot as we look to expand our pool of expert examiners in certain subjects”. There are some subjects and topics, she said, where it is “always a challenge to recruit enough good examiners. So we have to be open-minded if we want students to get their results on time and all our marking to be high quality.” She said the pilot would “probably involve around 50 people” out of its 30,000-plus examiners.
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“They’ll receive training and have to pass two different tests before they’re allowed to do any real marking – and anyone allowed to mark real student answers will be constantly monitored in real time, to make sure they’re doing it well. If not, they’ll be stopped.” It is not yet clear what proportion of AQA’s 10m exam scripts the examiners in the pilot will be asked to mark. An experienced AQA economics examiner, who has been teaching economics A-level for 15 years, told the Guardian that AQA usually started off new economics markers with 100 scripts each. AQA said the focus of its pilot would be on graduates and postgraduates, but it is also “interested in assessing some undergraduates as well to see how they perform”. The exam board has used PhD and PGCE students (postgraduates who are training to be teachers) in the past and claims their marking has been “as good as that of new examiners who are qualified teachers”. Research carried out by AQA and the University of Bristol in 2010 found that overall, undergraduates could mark part-scripts as accurately – but not as consistently – as existing GCSE English examiners, although there were some undergraduates who marked as well as the best examiners. An ad to take part in marking economics papers An ad to take part in marking economics papers. AQA revealed that “for some time now” it has been using newly qualified teachers and PGCE students as markers in some subjects. It also said university students would only be approved to mark the types of questions that they have shown they can mark well. “While the vast majority of our examiners will always be experienced teachers, that doesn’t mean that no one else can ever be suitable for the job,” said Webb. “For some types of questions in some qualifications, being good at following a mark scheme – combined with some knowledge of the subject – is enough.” Ben Wood, chair of the National Association of Teachers of Religious Education (NATRE), said he thought pupils sitting the AQA religious studies GCSE in the summer may feel “concerned” and “worried” about the idea of an undergraduate marking their Christianity papers. “You do need to know what you’re talking about to mark this. You need to know some of the intricacies of Christian theology, particularly.” He teaches the course himself and said experienced teachers who mark the paper understand how the course fits together, and how GCSE students might pull information from one area of the syllabus and use it appropriately in another area. “Being a humanity subject, it’s also not as simple as providing mark schemes and checking exam scripts against that,” he said. Wood said the current cohort of GCSE and A-level state school students had been enormously disadvantaged by the pandemic and some had missed a huge amount of teaching time. “The thought of them potentially having somebody marking their paper who’s not well qualified to do that – it feels to me like we’re adding potentially more disadvantage on to more disadvantage. And they deserve better.” An economics A-level teacher who works as a “team lead” examiner for AQA and wished to remain anonymous, said he was worried it might be possible for wrongly marked scripts to slip through AQA’s “strict” quality control system: “There are checks in place and they are good – but you don’t check every single bit of marking.” An AQA spokesperson said this marker did not have knowledge of the pilot’s tests or monitoring processes and was jumping to the wrong conclusions. Joe Kinnaird, a religious studies GCSE teacher and AQA examiner, said even if university students passed all of AQA’s standardisation and quality control tests, he does not think they will be capable of marking exams well. “Ultimately, I think you have to be a classroom teacher. It actually undermines the teaching profession to assume that people who are not qualified teachers are able to mark exam papers.” Sarah Hannafin, a policy adviser at the National Association of Head Teachers, said when young people took an exam, their expectation was that markers were “experienced, serious teachers”. With confidence already “quite rocky”, due to what happened with the exams last summer, she thinks it is vital young people and their parents feel they can rely on the exam-marking process. “I’d go so far as to say I think it would be a mistake for them [AQA] to go ahead with it.” Ofqual, the exams regulator, said exam boards must ensure markers were competent. “What matters most is that markers are conscientious and follow the exam board’s mark schemes,” a spokesperson said. “Students can ask for the marking of their paper to be reviewed if they believe an error has been made.” In response to the criticisms, a spokesperson for AQA said the pilot would in no way disadvantage this year’s students or affect the accuracy of their results.
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How can you design fair, yet challenging, exams that accurately gauge student learning? Here are some general guidelines. There are also many resources, in print and on the web, that offer strategies for designing particular kinds of exams, such as multiple-choice. Choose appropriate item types for your objectives. Should you assign essay questions on your exams? Problem sets? Multiple-choice questions? It depends on your learning objectives. For example, if you want students to articulate or justify an economic argument, then multiple-choice questions are a poor choice because they do not require students to articulate anything. However, multiple-choice questions (if well-constructed) might effectively assess students’ ability to recognize a logical economic argument or to distinguish it from an illogical one. If your goal is for students to match technical terms to their definitions, essay questions may not be as efficient a means of assessment as a simple matching task. There is no single best type of exam question: the important thing is that the questions reflect your learning objectives. Highlight how the exam aligns with course objectives. Identify which course objectives the exam addresses (e.g., “This exam assesses your ability to use sociological terminology appropriately, and to apply the principles we have learned in the course to date”). This helps students see how the components of the course align, reassures them about their ability to perform well (assuming they have done the required work), and activates relevant experiences and knowledge from earlier in the course. Write instructions that are clear, explicit, and unambiguous. Make sure that students know exactly what you want them to do. Be more explicit about your expectations than you may think is necessary. Otherwise, students may make assumptions that run them into trouble. For example, they may assume – perhaps based on experiences in another course – that an in-class exam is open book or that they can collaborate with classmates on a take-home exam, which you may not allow. Preferably, you should articulate these expectations to students before they take the exam as well as in the exam instructions. You also might want to explain in your instructions how fully you want students to answer questions (for example, to specify if you want answers to be written in paragraphs or bullet points or if you want students to show all steps in problem-solving.) Write instructions that preview the exam. Students’ test-taking skills may not be very effective, leading them to use their time poorly during an exam. Instructions can prepare students for what they are about to be asked by previewing the format of the exam, including question type and point value (e.g., there will be 10 multiple-choice questions, each worth two points, and two essay questions, each worth 15 points). This helps students use their time more effectively during the exam. Word questions clearly and simply. Avoid complex and convoluted sentence constructions, double negatives, and idiomatic language that may be difficult for students, especially international students, to understand. Also, in multiple-choice questions, avoid using absolutes such as “never” or “always,” which can lead to confusion. Enlist a colleague or TA to read through your exam. Sometimes instructions or questions that seem perfectly clear to you are not as clear as you believe. Thus, it can be a good idea to ask a colleague or TA to read through (or even take) your exam to make sure everything is clear and unambiguous. Think about how long it will take students to complete the exam. When students are under time pressure, they may make mistakes that have nothing to do with the extent of their learning. Thus, unless your goal is to assess how students perform under time pressure, it is important to design exams that can be reasonably completed in the time allotted. One way to determine how long an exam will take students to complete is to take it yourself and allow students triple the time it took you – or reduce the length or difficulty of the exam. Consider the point value of different question types. The point value you ascribe to different questions should be in line with their difficulty, as well as the length of time they are likely to take and the importance of the skills they assess. It is not always easy when you are an expert in the field to determine how difficult a question will be for students, so ask yourself: How many subskills are involved? Have students answered questions like this before, or will this be new to them? Are there common traps or misconceptions that students may fall into when answering this question? Needless to say, difficult and complex question types should be assigned higher point values than easier, simpler question types. Similarly, questions that assess pivotal knowledge and skills should be given higher point values than questions that assess less critical knowledge.
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Think ahead to how you will score students’ work. When assigning point values, it is useful to think ahead to how you will score students’ answers. Will you give partial credit if a student gets some elements of an answer right? If so, you might want to break the desired answer into components and decide how many points you would give a student for correctly answering each. Thinking this through in advance can make it considerably easier to assign partial credit when you do the actual grading. For example, if a short answer question involves four discrete components, assigning a point value that is divisible by four makes grading easier. Creating objective test questions Creating objective test questions – such as multiple-choice questions – can be difficult, but here are some general rules to remember that complement the strategies in the previous section. Write objective test questions so that there is one and only one best answer. Word questions clearly and simply, avoiding double negatives, idiomatic language, and absolutes such as “never” or “always.” Test only a single idea in each item. Make sure wrong answers (distractors) are plausible. Incorporate common student errors as distractors. Make sure the position of the correct answer (e.g., A, B, C, D) varies randomly from item to item. Include from three to five options for each item. Make sure the length of response items is roughly the same for each question. Keep the length of response items short. Make sure there are no grammatical clues to the correct answer (e.g., the use of “a” or “an” can tip the test-taker off to an answer beginning with a vowel or consonant). Format the exam so that response options are indented and in column form. In multiple choice questions, use positive phrasing in the stem, avoiding words like “not” and “except.” If this is unavoidable, highlight the negative words (e.g., “Which of the following is NOT an example of…?”). Avoid overlapping alternatives. Avoid using “All of the above” and “None of the above” in responses. (In the case of “All of the above,” students only need to know that two of the options are correct to answer the question. Conversely, students only need to eliminate one response to eliminate “All of the above” as an answer. Similarly, when “None of the above” is used as the correct answer choice, it tests students’ ability to detect incorrect answers, but not whether they know the correct answer.) plans for next year’s A-level and GCSE cohorts (Students in England to get notice of topics after Covid disruption, 3 December). They do nothing to address the fundamental weakness in our education system, which is the underachievement of disadvantaged pupils compared with those from advantaged backgrounds. The pandemic has widened the differences between the two groups. Pupils in private schools have much better distance-learning provision if they are unable to attend. Advantaged pupils in state schools have access to computers and broadband and to places where they can study at home. The government’s promise to ensure all pupils have access to distance learning is another broken one.
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