System blamed for flawed grading
A report from Ofqual has highlighted shortcomings in the way the examination board, the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA), dealt with project management, user acceptance testing, and software training for its on-screen marking system, used by GCSE A-level examiners.
The marking system was extended to support longer, written answers to exam questions. However the project did not adhere to project management best practices, according to the examination regulator.
According to Guardian.co.uk, factors that contributed to the marking error included limited piloting of the new on-screen marking system, a lack of effective risk assessments and deficiencies in the role and training of examiners on the new system.
AQA may have identified the failure earlier if more effective risk assessment and arrangements for handling and reporting problems about the on-screen marking of scripts had been in place.
Ofqual says that AQA first identified a potential systemic problem with on-screen marking on 17 September 2010, one month after A-level results were published.
Last week, the qualifications regulator has said all school exams should be taken on computers in future as the era of traditional pen-and-paper testing comes to an end, writes The Telegraph.
Isabel Nisbet, Ofqual's chief executive, believes GCSEs and A-levels are in danger of becoming invalid because most children now learn and research their subjects online.
She called for all examinations to be computerised in future to cater for increasingly tech-savvy pupils. Two major exam boards warmly endorsed her call for reform.
However, teachers and assessment experts expressed dismay at the plan, which they said threatened to increase cheating, downgrade the art of handwriting, and undermine rigour in education.
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