Скачать или смотреть Getting the right result: how we ensure results are accurate and reliable

Watch Alex Scharaschkin, the Director of AQA's Centre for Education Research and Practice, talk about why there is currently a focus on exam marking. Find out why marking some subjects is more challenging than others and how we use detailed research to make marking as accurate and reliable as possible.

Useful time locations in the video:
At 0:06 Why are people interested in quality of marking?
At 0:43 Is marking getting better or worse?
At 1:15 How is AQA using research to improve quality?
At 2:14 What are you doing to make sure marking is accurate?


Video transcript:

Getting the right results

Why is there an increased focus on marking?
Alex Scharaschkin, Director of Centre for Education Research and Practice

I think there’s a lot more focus on exams, certainly than there was when I was in school and I think there’s two main reasons for this.
Firstly, exams these days are used, not just to assess the young people’s learning, but to provide information about schools and about teaching, for example, in performance tables, so there’s more pressure in the system.

The second reason is that there’s probably more transparency in society now than there has been in the past. People are perhaps more aware of the fact that if a pupil is say one or two marks below the grade C pass mark for an examination, they may want to ask for a review of the marking.

Is marking getting better or worse?
In terms of the enquiries that people make after the exam results have been issued, the proportion of results that change, the statistics show that they remain pretty constant year on year. Now the majority of changes that do occur are only for a mark or two.

Of course if a pupil is very close to the pass mark, to the grade C boundary mark as we call it, for example in a subject then, a mark or two difference might mean sometimes a grade change.

How is AQA using research to improve quality?
It is very important with assessment and with marking quality, that we build in that quality right from the start, that’s the only way we are going to get good results.

Our research allows us to design assessments that are effective in differentiating between candidates with different abilities; that can involve some quite simple things, like for example, having the right number of marks on the question paper to ensure that candidates can be graded accurately.

One of the real strengths of the English examination system is that we assess students’ abilities to do certain tasks by actually getting them to do those tasks. So for example, we ask students to write essays, to draw diagrams, construct arguments or speak a language. Of course those sort of tasks are by their nature harder to mark than multiple choice questions or simple factual answers to questions, but we think they are absolutely vital for a valid examination.

What are you doing to make sure marking is accurate?
We have a dedicated unit that analyses data on marking throughout the live marking process to make sure that if any problems are identified they can be acted on straight away. All of the markers that we employ, to mark our examinations are qualified teachers, they are experts in the subject that they are marking and they are given rigorous training both in assessment, generally and how to apply the marking guidance, the mark schemes as we call them for the subjects that they are marking.
Before markers mark students work, they have to mark a lot of practice questions to make sure that their marking is accurate.
Now, most marking does take place on screen these days which has a number of benefits. It means for example, we can break up students work into individual questions and allocate them to different markers. This increases the reliability of the marking because it means that markers looking at a particular question are not unduly influenced by how the pupil has performed on other questions on the examination paper.

At AQA we do a detailed analysis of every single question on every single question paper after the examination. We use this to identify where things have worked well and how we can make our assessments even better in the future.

For more information visit the following links:
http://www.aqa.org.uk/news-and-policy...

http://www.aqa.org.uk/news-and-policy...

or visit our AQA homepage at aqa.org.uk
Please note that all information on assessments was correct at the time of recording. For the latest information on your subject, please visit aqa.org.uk