Examining
One of the most valuable experiences I had as a teacher was undertaking the role of an examiner, (in both Maths and Computing).
Some of my experiences helped me to understand the importance of getting into the mind of the examiner. The first was when I was at school.
One of my teachers composed exams in two parts – short answer questions which had definite answers: which you could get right, or wrong, and the second part asked for essays for which you got one mark for every relevant fact. You can imagine my surprise and outrage when for one essay I got a total of “minus two”. I quickly learnt, however, that this was the way that essays were usually marked … it was possible to write pages and pages of drivel and get no marks or write a couple of pages in “rough notes” and still up a lot of marks – losing only a few, say two or three, for “style”. It got a bit complicated in later years when every subject had to mark “English Language” as well as content, but basically it was still possible to pick up a creditable pass mark with this technique.
Another important lesson I learned was to look at how many marks were allocated to a question … why spend a long time trying to answer a question which was worth only two or three marks when there were worth 10, 15 or even 20 marks. There are some examinations, especially multiple choice papers, (Multiple choice papers tend to have special rules and it is important to know which rules apply), in some cases there is no penalty for wrong answers and always the chance that you would guess correctly so you should never leave an answer blank, on the other hand, if there is a penalty then you should never make a wild guess.
Two of my teachers produced lists of all the examination questions that had been set in their subjects over the years … “since the year dot”, so it seemed when they gave us the lists, they were so long. They advised us to prepare answers for these questions to prepare ourselves for the examinations, so I dutifully worked through the list, week after week producing one or two answers. Not only did this provide me with valuable material and practice, I gained valuable revision material and, far more importantly, I realised that there were only a certain number of questions that examiners could ask. If we had believed that the answer to the first question on the Maths section of the eleven plus examination was always “11″, we were mistaken … but I discovered that there was something to the assertion in Delderfield’s novel “To serve them all their days” that the first question in the Biology examination was always about Blood … the first question in A-Level Physical Geography was always about Glaciation. After some analysis of previous papers I realised this, and duly prepared. Imagine my horror when I read the first question on the paper when I sat the exam … “To what extent can the landforms of the British Islands be ascribed to the Pleistocene period?” … I was stumped … What was the Pleistocene period? It was only after I left the examination and compared notes with my classmates that I understood … it’s the Ice Age!
If I fell a cropper in the A-Level geography examination … the tactic of analyzing previous papers stood me in good stead in my other subjects. It’s a technique I took with me into my teaching period and helped a lot of my students through their exams.
Another lesson I learned was when I was in college, preparing for my degree. One of my tutors recommended attending a series of seminars in one of the Oxford Colleges. The lectures looked interesting and appropriate – but were not exactly what I thought would be the most useful use of my time … until it was pointed out that the person conducting the seminars was my chief examiner … here was a perfect opportunity to get to know the person who would be marking and grading at least some of my final papers. I might even get the chance to impress him with suitable questions and answers in the seminars … “it is often more difficult to fail someone when you can put a face to the name”. I took the opportunity that fate handed to me … and attended the seminars.
My first experience of actually working in the examination system was as a student when I got a holiday job as a “checker” for one of the exam boards. It surprised me how many so-called “intelligent” people couldn’t add up the marks they had awarded a candidate – and as a result this was something I paid great attention to when I eventually became an examiner. Later as a with the Certificate of Secondary Education (CSE), which was the equivalent of a school leaving certificate, and the system involved using class teachers as markers and examiners. Most of this was just like marking a series of class exercises. It wasn’t any more onerous, although there was a sense of greater responsibility. You also knew that a sample of your work was checked by someone re-marking the script … your opinion wasn’t final … there was always the chance that your marks would be adjusted – and could even be totally rejected if they were considered to be too erroneous or erratic.
When my career moved into computing I applied for several jobs as a assistant examiner in Computing, (without any expectation of success – hey, my degree was in Theology, not computing or any other related subject), and to my surprise and amazement I was accepted – for all of them! Every year, from May until August, I spent many long hours marking scripts and coursework projects, and attending meetings. It was a hard job, carrying great responsibility but it was a great experience which helped me immensely in many different ways. I would strongly recommend it to any teacher as being both rewarding and worthwhile.
My career began with straight forward marking of short answer questions … these were fairly straight forward. Essays were much more difficult. Essays are much more open ended and there is much more room for interpretation – what was the question looking for? what constitutes a relevant fact? and so forth.
I also got employed as a moderator of coursework. This was much more difficult as it tended to involve much more subjective judgments – even when we had rigid marking schemes to apply. It was also very rewarding as a form of “in-service” training because you got to see how other people taught and interpreted the same material that you had … the range of projects were also very wide and would often spark off thought processes and lead to interesting developments.
I got promoted within the exam system and became a senior examiner, and reviser, responsible for setting some of the questions … checking them and their answers – were they reasonable?, was the allocation of marks reasonable? did they maintain standards? could they be interpreted by candidates in different ways? could they be answered in the time available? … and so on. On one occasion I vetoed a question because it had been asked three years running.
Amongst the most difficult parts of the job were 1) remarking papers on appeal and writing reports explaining why the candidate, no matter how good they were normally, had not performed as well as expected and 2) running training courses for teachers who, naturally, thought that they knew everything, or at least knew better than the examiners.
However, the most difficult part was dealing with obvious cases of cheating. This was most often in the case of moderating coursework. Once, as a classroom teacher, I was faced with a new class and after handing back the first piece of homework a pupil put up his hand and said, “You didn’t give me a mark.” That was true, there were two people who didn’t get a mark … so I asked who was the other one – and made them both stand up. I pointed out that the piece of work was worth 15 marks out of 20 – but who should give them to? … Adam or Colin? … or maybe I should split them 50-50, seven and a half each, or maybe … my decision was made for me when Adam said: “Give him the marks …”; nobody in that class ever copied work again. Often, it is so easy to spot copied work … sometimes it is simple things like two pieces of work being identical – including spelling mistakes – or phrases like: “see Fig.115 opposite” tucked away somewhere in the text that has been copied blindly without any thought – and no figure opposite. On one occasion I was marking a piece of work and I thought to myself, “I’ve seen this before” … went to the bookshelf and picked out the book with it in … on another I was marking and thought “I’ve seen this before” and went back and checked my records and it had been submitted by another candidate the year before … the only thing that had changed was the title page. (Incidentally, and I was really pleased with this … it got the same marks both years running – at least I was marking consistently … that is until I discovered the plagiarism and referred it back to the school.) The most embarrassing example was, however when I was marking a piece of and thought to myself, “I’ve seen this before” … I didn’t need to look anything up this time, I recognised it instantly … I should have … because I had written it! It was a specimen that I had written and given to my class a few years earlier … how this candidate got hold of a copy I don’t know … but it was referred to the board for investigation.
Bishkek