Examination of Witnesses (Questions 300-319)
WEDNESDAY 6 NOVEMBER 2002
MR NEIL
HOPKINS, MR
EDWARD GOULD
AND MR
TONY NEAL
300. You mentioned the need occasionally to
complain and the fact that in some ways one board rather than
another gets it right. Should there not be general standards of
how, as I think you were alluding to earlier, grading is dealt
with or examining is done which you know are qualitative across
the board and they do not vary in the different examining boards
and the QCA you are indicating should have the power to regulate
in those areas?
(Mr Hopkins) That is my view. What goes on in those
boards is largely a closed box as far as we are concerned. I read
the evidence from last week and I discovered things about the
way the boards work and that was the first time I had found that
out.
301. And they differ.
(Mr Hopkins) They differ in their methods. I do think
there is a role for QCA being a regulatory body and make sure
there is equivalence between the boards.
(Mr Neal) Parity of standard, which is desirable,
is not the same as parity of results, statistics. They are different.
(Mr Gould) Certainly we would look for more co-ordination
of the procedures of the boards, particularly in terms of awarding,
and we would say that routinely it should be the case that representatives
of other boards should be present at the awarding meetings of
a particular board in order to help to achieve that parity.
Chairman: One of your answers excited
either indigestion or a "harrumph" from one of my members.
Jonathan Shaw
302. Mr Hopkins, you said that you have got
issues with AQA and that is an ongoing issue within your English
department, but you do not change examination boards. You are
a principal and you are saying that your English department do
not wish to change, despite all the difficulties in terms of the
grades for the students, because the course work etc they find
to their liking. Coming back to you, is this collusion here, the
fact that with teachers and examination boards people are not
complaining, people are not taking their business elsewhere?
(Mr Hopkins) It is not collusion. I need to expand
on that if I may. We have had difficulty with a particular exam,
the AS in English Literature with AQA, where we had difficulty
with the marking. It had been poorly marked. We have complained
and they have put it right. It has happened two years on the run,
which I think is unsatisfactory. I have had a dialogue with them
about their quality assurance procedures and if they do what they
say they will do and if they mark correctly we do not have a problem.
It is a question of how long do you put up with poor quality marking.
303. We have only heard about one year this
year and you have been putting up with two years.
(Mr Hopkins) Yes, exactly. Because it was put right
very quickly. In fact, we got the new AS grades back in time for
it not to affect the students' UCAS applications.
304. So this sort of thing goes on all the time?
(Mr Hopkins) Yes.
305. The fact that it is A-levels actually gives
it more attention. Is that what you are telling us?
(Mr Hopkins) I think that is probably true, yes.
306. Going back to the evidence that we had
from the examination boards last week, you say you have read the
transcript. Is that going to assist you in terms of making complaints
or raising issues now you know what they do or do not do?
(Mr Hopkins) I do not know if it will assist me. It
made me realise how little I had known and I am from one of the
biggest, if not the biggest, A-level centres, and if I knew so
little about it then I suspect other institutions know very little
as well and there is something to be done about looking up those
procedures.
307. So you do not expect to come back here
next year and say that you are still having the same problems
with AQA but you are still keeping your business with them?
(Mr Hopkins) I sincerely hope not. We have had reassurances.
The chief examiner put it right. They had difficulties with the
examiners. I said at the start that our difficulty is with the
quality of the examiners that the boards are being forced to recruit
because they are short of examiners.
Chairman
308. It is very nice to hear that you have been
reading the transcript of the deliberations of this Committee
last week but Ken Boston still had some degree of fear about the
future, that the problems could arise again and that of course
caused us quite a lot of concern. One of the suggestions that
came up last week in getting the AS/A2 levels right was almost
uniform across the three examining boards, that they thought it
should be 40% of the first AS year and 60% for the second. How
would you react to that suggestion?
(Mr Hopkins) Frankly I do not think it matters too
much as long as we know and as long as it is clear. Personally
I would like the AS to be a separate examination.
309. Does it have to be an external examination
board or could colleges mark it internally and assess it internally?
(Mr Hopkins) There could be more internal marking
and assessment, but it does put a tremendous load on teachers.
Art and Design, for example, is 100% internally marked already
and then just moderated from outside. That is a tremendous burden
on teachers. There is a temptation there I think for the boards
to say that it is a good thing because it puts the problem somewhere
else. Yes, let's have a degree of internal marking, and certainly
a greater degree of trust of teachers is a good thing, but there
is a compromise that needs to be struck.
310. Edward Gould, you seem to be warmer towards
internal assessment.
(Mr Gould) I would go for some internal assessment,
yes, with moderation. I think there is a difference between a
candidate who may be wishing to go on to take a full A-level,
and a candidate who is just taking AS-level. And, so long as you
know in the first case that they have covered the units and specifications
and have not skipped anything all should be well; that is very
light touch. For someone who wants to use AS-level as an exit
point, for whatever reason, from that subject, I think the amount
of assessment has to command credibility with employers and places
of higher education of all sorts, and therefore some slightly
more robust form of assessment is required for those particular
candidates. Otherwise I would uncouple. As has been said, whether
it is 40/60 or 50/50, as long as we know and it is clear I will
leave it to the wizards above.
311. Do you go along with that, Tony?
(Mr Neal) Yes. I do not see how the difference between
40/60 and 50/50 would have made a significant difference to this
year's outcomes and yes, we would go along with them because there
is too much external assessment, because the whole system is buckling
under the amount of external assessment, with 30 million papers
flying around each year, and we can see all the time the ways
in which the system is having difficulty in coping with that.
A move towards internal assessment at AS level with an external
assessment at A2 level we would support.
Mr Turner
312. Mr Neal, you said earlier that an A2 should
have equated to legacy A-level. Do you think it did?
(Mr Neal) We have really no way of knowing. We did
not know what the standards were during the course of the year
we were teaching A2 and, to be honest, we still do not know what
they are because we are still receiving amended results.
313. But clearly an A-level should equate to
legacy A-level?
(Mr Neal) Yes, it should. The issue here is the AS
standard. Assuming that the AS standard was right, and we have
no reason to suppose that it was not, then a candidate who in
the past, let us say, would have got a B at A-level, would have
got a B on their AS modules because the aim of the AS modules
was to replicate the A-level standard but allow for the fact that
it was taken a year earlier and therefore the content and maturity
of the candidates would be affected by that. If that candidate
got a B on their AS modules, they would need then to get a B on
their A2 modules to stay at the level they would have been for
A-level, no need whatever therefore to change the level of A2.
That could have and should have remained on a parity with the
old A-level and indeed, when Curriculum 2000 was being discussed,
there was never any suggestion that the A2 level was going to
be raised.
314. But the theory, which I am sure some of
you will be familiar with, from Dr McLone was that because the
AS level is easier—
(Mr Neal) And that is the weasel word, is it not?
AS is not easier. The standard for AS is that it should be such
that a candidate in the past who had achieved grade B, let us
say, at A-level a year later would achieve grade B at AS-level.
315. Yes, but, taking account of their lesser
maturity, to achieve a grade B would require the same skill and
effort and everything else. If you do not take account of their
lesser maturity it is easier. That, I think, is Dr McLone's point.
(Mr Neal) The system was postulated on the notion
that AS would be taken at the end of the first year and that the
parity would be achieved taking account of the fact that it was
taken at the end of the first year.
316. I will open this up to your colleagues
in a moment if I may. If I can tell you what has come through
all this to me it is that Dr McLone found it much more difficult
with intellectual honesty to cope with the AS-level being "easier"
without making the A2 "harder" so that they would add
up to an A-level which was an equivalent standard to legacy A-level.
What is your reaction to that?
(Mr Gould) QCA should have set the standard. It is
not for the individual Awarding Body to set the standard. We need
a parity of standard across the board, not a parity of results,
and it is not in my view according to the code of practice of
the QCA as I understand it up to the Awarding Bodies' chief executives
or the accountable officers to set the standard. The standard
is set by QCA and therefore I do not think—and I have nothing
against him—it was Ron McLone's job to set the standard
for candidates sitting OCR. It was QCA's job and they had to monitor
and regulate that standard and that is where I think things must
be put right in future so that there is a parity of standard across
boards so that all children are confident that whatever board
the head of department puts them in for they will be treated fairly,
consistently, accurately and with a quality result.
(Mr Hopkins) I certainly agree with that idea. However,
I think the difficulty is because of this notion that the AS and
A2 go together to make A-level. It transpired as it developed
that A2 would be harder than the old A-level to make up for AS
being easier or earlier. Is that the same thing? It is actually
a very difficult intellectual standard to fit in. How does one
do that? The problem would be solved if AS were a separate exam
with its own level at the end of the year and those results were
not then taken as part of the final A-level, and if then A2 could
be at the legacy A-level standard. If they were two discrete examinations
it would be far easier to understand and far easier to cope with.
317. You have both answered that in a way which
implies—and correct me if I am wrong—that you agree
with my broad thesis about Dr McLone's approach.
(Mr Gould) No, I do not agree with Dr McLone's approach.
318. No, but you agree with my thesis?
(Mr Gould) Sorry; that is okay.
319. But where the standard has not been set
what else could the chief executives have done?
(Mr Gould) If, going back to your initial thesis,
that you wanted consistency of standard, maintaining standards
across time, bearing in mind there was no pilot, no exemplar material,
no standards set, then the best thing you had in my view was the
judgment of teachers who are examiners and awarders and scrutineers
from right across the spectrum. Particularly in course work, where
they have been doing it for years,—and there is nothing
new about course work as a unit—they were able to do it
this summer with moderators trained by the boards, I assume, who
moderated the teachers' work and those awards, that were then
turned into an AS and A2, should remain consistent. That would
be at least one way of ensuring a maintenance of a standard across
the two years and moving from the legacy A-level to the current
A-level.
(Mr Neal) Could I reiterate that there should not
have been a difficulty about setting the A2 standard and that
standard should have been in line with the legacy A-level standard
and there should certainly not have been an intellectual difficulty
with that. There are always practical issues in terms of setting
any standard.
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