IT is a sad fact of educational life that no external examination
system is proof against mistakes by markers or cheating by candidates
and their teachers. No exam of any kind can guarantee the degree of
reliability, validity, and objectivity the customer requires -- and is
led to expect -- of it.
Few education systems in the world are so much in thrall of external
exams as ours, and few are so overstretched. External exams were devised
about a century ago to counter nepotism, and to select officer material
from the increasingly literate and numerate other ranks.
And that is still their job. But in addition they are currently
struggling with a task few other systems would attempt -- assessing and
certificating all pupils at the statutory leaving age. Government does
not trust teachers, and teachers do not trust each other, to tackle this
chore internally. And so teachers and pupils sit exams together, and
both are under pressure to pass.
It is worth remembering that before O Grade, school leavers were
certificated by education authorities, on the basis of internal
assessment by the school. These certificates survived the introduction
of O Grade, though they were increasingly devalued by the existence of a
national certificate until the raising of the school leaving age -- at
which point O Grade became the school leaving certificate, but was
insufficiently flexible to cover the whole range. As with the O Grade,
so now with the Higher.
The place of the local certificate was taken in some areas by CSE Mode
Three, an English certificate that relied heavily on internal
assessment. This was swept away by Standard Grade and the English GCSE
-- and internal assessment was further eroded as these developed.
There are a lot of people in the educational and political
establishment who dislike internal assessment because, basically, they
do not trust teachers. The people who are reckoned to be the consumers
of these certificates -- employers mainly -- have long been conditioned
to believe that the national, external exam is much more valid than any
local or school-based assessment, however moderated.
Because for all that is said and written on the purposes of exams,
their main job is, and always was, to grade young people like
assembly-line products or agricultural produce. When it comes to exams
and certificates we live in a dependency culture, and no single group in
education bears more responsibility for this than the teaching
profession.
Secondary teachers shy away from the responsibility of certificating
their pupils. Every time they have been offered the option, however
obliquely, they have chosen external exams over internal assessment.
Primary teachers were freed from the pressure of external assessment
around the time secondary teachers welcomed it in the guise of O Grade,
and they still prefer internal assessment to national tests.
Which group displays the more mature professional responsibility? But
secondary teachers trust neither primary teachers' professionalism nor
their motivation. University teachers show a similar professional
respect for their secondary colleagues.
And that means we are stuck with a dependency on external testing and
a system that will become more and more unreliable as it is subjected to
a volume of pressure the Scottish Examination Board was not designed to
withstand.
This year's home economics debacle came about because one key person
was on sick leave at the crucial time. We will have to get used to such
''blips'', and an appeals procedure that can deal only with university
candidates. The teacher-pupil alliance will respond to the external
threat at the very least by coaching.
As it is, the examiners are cheerfully taking on a huge and absurd
amount of cumbersome testing jobs, culminating in a 16-plus leaving
certificate -- Standard Grade -- which for most pupils is not a leaving
certificate at all. And whatever happens to the real leaving certificate
in such a system -- Higher Grade -- you can bet your life it will cost
plenty.
But until we rid ourselves of superstition, or the external exam
system collapses under its own weight, it is only fair that teachers and
pupils should start practising the art of passing these daft tests as
soon as possible.
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