By Joe Rukin
It seems now that every year, with the same regularity that A-level & Highers results come out, there is a farce to follow them. This year is no different. There have already been a few, but the biggie is here now. Independent fee-paying schools are now saying that their students have been deliberately nobbled. The schools say that the OCR (Oxford, Cambridge & RSA) Exam board, which over 90% of them use has been deliberately marking their students' coursework down. But why would anyone want to do that?
For a couple of weeks headmasters & headmistresses in the Independent sector have been scratching their heads as to what went wrong at their school this year as so many of their students performed worse than they had been predicted. With the marks for students' first courseworks in and backing up high-grade predictions, the sector thought it was in for a bumper crop, but students across the board who had been predicted A's started getting U's. It was thought that with such high marks at coursework at schools, some of whose methods and standards of assessment had already been moderated, that bad exam performance was to blame, but it wasn't. It was a mass downgrading of coursework marks.
The mass drop in grades had aroused great suspicion in the schools. One school featured on Newsnight normally got one U grade for history out of over 30 students. This year they got 15. Other students have got 100% in pre-moderated coursework but have walked out with Es. Last year OCR received 1600 queries over marks, while this year the figure is already over 4,000. The conspiracy theories are out, and with good cause. For it seems that it is only this one exam board, OCR, that have this problem. OCR is generally accepted as the toughest exam board for many subjects. Independent schools use it because they know that when admissions tutors at Universities have to differentiate between the 12 straight A students applying for just one place, they will use exam boards as one of many differentials. But this leaves them vulnerable, with OCR marks being down having the effect of delivering a controlled explosion in the fee-paying section of the education sector.
The exams watchdog, the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), is to deliver an inquiry on Friday, but not wishing to prejudge has already dismissed that there is any conspiracy. The reasons for one are plentiful, with Heads saying the QCA told OCR to mark down. Not to make A-levels look to easy is one such reason. OCR claim they were criticised in the past for easier exams and have sought to rectify it. But the scale of the change in marks suggest more than overcompensation. With A-level passes shooting up 4.5% this year, it has been thought that OCR students have been marked down because, without their failures, the rise in the pass rate may have seemed comical, almost touching 100%. Even the QCA had said one of the effects of the governments A2/AS changes was likely to be that the pass rate would be inflated.
Another benefit for the government of worse grades at private schools would be to see them slip down league tables, and consequently state schools climb them. This could handily show us all how Labour education policy is paying off. How would a speech from Blair with the line "..and now for the first time comprehensives in X,Y&Zshire are out performing their fee-paying counterparts...." sound? The one thing that has been missed so far is the effect to the university participation figures.
No matter what happens now, for most the damage has been done as students who had been told they would get their places at University if they got the grades have now not, and those places have been taken up by someone else. There could have been no easier way to up the participation rates from working class backgrounds at top universities than by failing all the rich kids. Also with government spending on participation favouring the rich universities which increase participation opposed to the class of 1992 which already have far better participation rates, it is another handy nail in the coffin of the former polytechnics as the sector is 'leaned up' for GATS.
Of course a politically-motivated involvement has been dismissed by the Prime Minister's official spokesperson as "utter rubbish", with education secretary Estelle Morris saying;
"The day that government ministers start interfering in the setting of marks or grade boundaries is the day I would rue.", but the schools aren't buying it, saying the OCR was told by government to come down on them. Heads are demanding and independent inquiry and some are threatening legal action. 40 schools in the Headmasters' and Headmistresses' Conference have complained about OCRs marking and chairman Edward Gould said:
"Letting the QCA carry out the investigation into exam fixing is like putting the fox into the chicken run to count the chickens."
His counterpart John Dunford of the Secondary Heads Association also expects a whitewash;
"I am extremely concerned about this and we need to think about the effects on individuals of the loss of public confidence in the exam system. If initial inquiries through the usual channels such as the Department for Education and Skills prove unsatisfactory then we would expect a proper independent inquiry. The QCA is far too close to the government for allegations as serious as this."
Related Articles
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BBC, Exam fixing conspiracy denied
BBC, Warning over A-level results claims
BBC, Student twice given wrong exam grade
Guardian, Exam 'fix' inquiry attacked by heads
Guardian, 'Exam fix' inquiry refused by Morris
Times, Chiefs accused of ordering grade cuts
Independent, Exams watchdog denies A-levels were fixed
