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Last update: 27/05/2012 |
Open letter to Ofqual.Download letter here. Downoad signing sheet here. Letterv.4 to Chair of Ofqual
19-Jan-12 An open letter to the Chair of Ofqual and the Chief Executives of exam
boards January 2012 Longer-term
Although severe grading in Modern Languages, especially at
GCSE, was identified as a major concern and impediment by the Dearing Review in
2006, confirmed by a QCA report in 2008 and one of the topics in the Ofqual
Inter-subject comparability seminar in October 2008, no concrete action has been
taken to make the tiny adjustments to the raw mark / grade boundary links to
bring ML in line with the other EBacc subjects such as Maths, Science and
History and Geography. Immediate steps
The following specific steps are all achievable, command
widespread support and would contribute to greater confidence in the examination
system. The key principle behind the
proposals is that of transparency, a
principle which the Government has already put into practice in several areas. 1)
Transparency in the process of determining the grade boundaries
for individual papers and then to an overall grade (GCSE and AS/A2) i.e. given the raw marks
produced each year by the markers, the decision-making process through which
those raw marks are converted to UMS for each paper, and thus to an overall
grade
Possible measures: ·
a school representative at the main grading meeting ·
publication of borderline examples ·
publication of data re: distribution of marks (including prior
attainment)
And thus as outcome: ·
an informed person should be able to read and understand why grade
boundaries were set as they were each year In particular, we would wish
Ofqual and the exam boards to be explicit regarding any technical constraints,
and that there is clarity re process / decision-making where there has been a
change from one year to the next e.g. in specification / format of exam etc.
For example, this transparency should enable an understanding of the
discrepancy in the percentage of A* awarded at A2 when compared with similar
subjects with a high percentage of A grades. The unpredictable grading in ML
oral exam has been a concern in recent years.
Specific information should be made available about how boards
differentiate between pre-learned material and genuine fluency identified and in
what way this affects grading. Signing sheet
An Open Letter to the Chair of Ofqual and the Chief Executives of exam
boards We, the undersigned, urge that action be taken to address
the ongoing and new serious concerns regarding marking
and grading of public examinations in Modern Languages, as described in the
Open Letter of January 2012.
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