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Are exams really getting easier or is the quality of marking just getting better?

It has been another great year for UK A level and GCSE results with the pass rate up once again.  The GCSE results also show a rise in the numbers receiving top grades.  But instead of congratulating these students on their success, some people accuse the government of slipping standards and easier examinations.

The government is quick to defend its position, saying that rising standards represent real and remarkable achievement – by students, teachers and parents alike.  Teachers say exams are as tough as ever.

Yet to be considered in this debate is the improved quality of examination marking, but a move towards electronic marking has been instrumental in improved accuracy within the marking process.

Electronic marking provides greater accuracy of marking and quality control, improved speed of mark transmission, improved management data and improved post examination data analysis.  It streamlines the process for examiners, releasing them from many of the administrative functions of the conventional system and allowing them to concentrate on the key task – accurate and efficient marking.  Electronic marking also enables enhanced checking and quality control, which has a direct impact on the accuracy of the marking process. Security is also increased as the technology uses bank standard systems.  All this is excellent news for students.

Despite this, electronic marking has received bad press thanks to a lack of understanding about the nature of the process – not  only what the ‘new process’ of electronic marking is but also the manual process that it is beginning to replace.

UK Awarding Body, Assessment and Qualifications Alliance’s (AQA) research department has been exploring whether the introduction of electronic marking has enhanced the quality of marking. A short piece of research was conducted investigating the impact of electronic marking on enquiries after results, using data on the number of re-mark requests and their outcomes for all externally assessed GCSE components in June 2005 compared with 2006. Although there is a general increase in GCSE requests for remarking, their findings suggest that electronically marked components had reduced the proportion of outcomes where a grade had been changed at a statistically significant level.

Traditional manual marking methods are prone to problems that can lead to delays and errors in results, a fact that was recently highlighted around this summer's National Curriculum Test marking. When examination scripts are transported around the country for marking, huge security issues are posed with papers sometimes going missing.  With electronic marking, the papers are collected from schools and sent to one central location where they are scanned into a secure computer system.  Markers elsewhere can then log into the system, call up the scripts and mark them online.  Marks are automatically held in the system so no results can go missing.

With electronic marking, quality control is carried out as standard, double-marking items with business rules to deal with variance and use of pre-marked, standard items to judge marking quality – known as ‘seed’ items.  A number of seed answers must be marked correctly at the start of each day and regular seeded answers are introduced while an examiner is marking and a marking tolerance is established for each item.  Variant markers are then stopped.

Students’ futures depend on the accuracy of exam marking and so a collaborative approach is required within the assessment sector to raise the profile of electronic marking.  Encouraging regulators and policy makers to acknowledge the benefits and assist in promoting generic approaches is also crucial.

DRS e-Marker®

DRS e-Marker® offers a variety of modular and scalable electronic marking methods for awarding, assessment and professional bodies.  Designed to add value, reduce the time to announce results and improve accuracy and reliability of examination marking, e Marker® harnesses the power of award winning real-time image capture readers, specialist bureau services and sophisticated software delivered across the internet, to capture securely item-level responses (i.e. individual questions ) and marks from examiners.

e-Marker® is designed to enable examination and assessment bodies to capitalise on the flexibility that marking from image brings.  Approaches to marking that are impossible to implement at scale from paper-based marking are now made available through e-Marker®. Key benefits include:

  • routing items of different content or marking difficulty to specialist groups of markers 
  • real-time monitoring of marking accuracy 
  • re-distribution of marking load electronically 
  • marking appeals without the need to re-scan scripts or circulate original paper copies.
  • providing an immense amount of additional information to help students’ future studies.

Recent research has shown that item-based marking has a very high degree of marking accuracy, producing marking outcomes that have increased reliability.  In addition, e-Marker® provides invaluable management information, providing a wealth of added value and benefits, including:

  • centralised logistics and script management 
  • status reporting on key processes 
  • removal of clerical errors 
  • problem resolution through the inspection of images of scripts 
  • business rules to ensure all marking is completed 
  • different quality control options 
  • marking cost reduction through the use of computer-assisted expert marking and general marking 
  • regular transfer of mark data 
  • provision of management information through tailored reports 
  • support of awarding processes through the selection of key script