Reply To Examination Abolitionists

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32143, 12 November 1969, Page 6

Reply To Examination Abolitionists

(Specially written for "The Press" by V. F. WILKINSON)

Mr L. B. Galbraith, in his recent article, speaking for the examination abolitionists, spent much time describing an experiment on English essay marking that was discredited in the 19405. Under the present system of School Certificate marking of essays, each marker is given photostatic copies of guinea-pig scripts which are discussed and marked, so that each marker soon knows the marking “key.” As a followup, check marking at random helps to keep him in line with the others. My guess is that in the original experiment none of this was done at all, which certainly would result in considerable variation.

Mr Galbraith had some other objections to the examination system. The first was that it encouraged “spotting" of questions. This may have

been so under the old Matriculation examination, but today’s School Certificate prescriptions are so wide and the choice of questions so large that very few teachers waste time in such a practice. Mr Galbraith’s statement that it would be easy to maintain even standards of assessment by different schools is a bold one when one thinks of the difficulty the university had to obtain the same evenness in accrediting for entrance.

The university had two aids that accrediting for School Certificate would not have: one was the candidates’ subsequent performance at university; if one school accredited too many pupils who had a record of failure at university it was in danger of

losing its right to accredit Second, pupils who were not accredited had the right of pitting the examination which acted as a court of appeal for the pupils and a guide to the principal of the school: if too many pupils passed the examination, he had been too hard in his assessment; if too few he had not been hard enough. I regret I cannot share Mr Galbraith’s faith in the ability of teachers to make a perfect assessment of a pupil’s worth. Like doctors, they are only human, but unlike doctors their mistakes live on to confound them. I would say that teachers’ assessment is at least just as short of perfect as the examination system, with this added disadvantage —it is not seen to be fair.