[ 2011-12-09 ]

How UK examiners tip off teachers to help students pass
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has ordered
an official inquiry into the exam system after an
investigation exposed examiners giving teachers
secret advice on how to improve their GCSE and
A-level results.

London (UK) - 07 Dec 2011 – The Telegraph - An
undercover investigation by The Daily Telegraph
discloses that teachers are paying up to £230 a
day to attend seminars with chief examiners during
which they are advised on exam questions and the
exact wording that pupils should use to obtain
higher marks.

The advice appears to go far beyond the standard
“guidance” and opens exam boards to
accusations that they are undermining the purpose
of exam syllabuses by encouraging “teaching to
the test”.

One chief examiner has been secretly recorded by
this newspaper telling teachers which questions
their pupils could expect in the next round of
exams.

“We’re cheating,” he says. “We’re
telling you the cycle [of the compulsory
question]. Probably the regulator will tell us
off.”

He advised teachers that he was telling them how
to “hammer exam technique” rather than the
approach of “proper educationalists” to
“teach the lot”.


The disclosures will add to growing fears over the
apparent “dumbing down” of standards in
British schools which has led to grade inflation
in exams over the past decade.

The investigation has exposed a system in which
exam boards aggressively compete with one another
to win “business” from schools. Evidence that
standards of exams have been deliberately driven
down to encourage schools to sign up for them has
also been uncovered.

After being presented with details of The Daily
Telegraph’s investigation, Mr Gove ordered an
urgent inquiry from Ofqual, the exam regulator,
which will report back before Christmas.

In a statement issued last night, the Education
Secretary said: “Our exams system needs
fundamental reform. The revelations confirm that
the current system is discredited.

“I have asked Glenys Stacey [the chief executive
of Ofqual] to investigate the specific concerns
identified by the Telegraph, to examine every
aspect of the exam boards’ conduct which gives
rise to concern and to report back to me within
two weeks with her conclusions and recommendations
for further action.

“As I have always maintained, it is crucial our
exams hold their own with the best in the world.
We will take whatever action is necessary to
restore faith in our exam system. Nothing is off
the table.”

The disclosures will add to fears that those
offering to help teachers obtain the highest
grades will make higher revenues as their tests
become more popular. Exam marks have reached new
records during each of the past 23 years as the
system has become increasingly commercialised.

The Daily Telegraph has learnt that ministers
flagged up their concerns to Ofqual last week that
competition between exam boards may be fuelling
the “race to the bottom” for exam standards.

In England there are three main exam boards
offering GCSEs and A-levels — OCR, AQA and
Edexcel. However in recent years the Welsh exam
board, WJEC, has started to become more popular.

A series of secretive exam seminars, which are
thought to have rapidly grown in popularity in
recent years, are suspected of being at the centre
of concerns over the system.

Are you a teacher or examiner with concerns over
workings of exam boards? Please email your
experiences to examboards@telegraph.co.uk

Detailed information is also provided to teachers
on official websites and other literature,
including formally endorsed text books produced by
exam boards which has proliferated in recent
years.

Undercover reporters from this newspaper went to
13 meetings organised by boards used by English
schools and found that teachers were routinely
given information about future questions, areas of
the syllabus that would be assessed and specific
words or facts students must use to answer in
questions to win marks.

The seminars were usually held in hotels and cost
between £120 to £230. Each one is typically
attended by at least 20 teachers, but sometimes as
many as 100.

At a WJEC course in London for GCSE history last
month, teachers were told by Paul Evans, one of
the chief examiners of the course, that the
compulsory question for section A of the exam
“goes through a cycle”.

“This coming summer, and there’s a slide on
this later on, it’s going to be the middle bit:
'Life in Germany 1933-39’ or for America, it
will be 'Rise and Fall of the American Economy’
… So if you know what the compulsory section is
you know you’ve got to teach that.” When a
teacher pointed out that they had been told to
teach the entire syllabus, choice, as opposed to
us saying 'Right you’ve got to teach
everything’.

“We’re cheating, we’re telling you the
cycle.”

When one of his colleagues said this information
was not in the course specification, Mr Evans
said: “No, because we’re not allowed to tell
you.”

WJEC literature on the website also appears to
advise teachers that they need not teach the full
syllabus and points out which sections will be
examined each year.

When one of Mr Evans’s colleagues, Paul Barnes,
was asked by a teacher if he had understood
correctly that Mr Barnes was saying they would not
be asked a question on Iraq or Iran next year, he
replied: “Off the record, yes.”

Geoff Lucas, the former assistant chief executive
for the Qualification and Curriculum Authority
(QCA), Ofqual’s predecessor, said the examiners
appeared “damned by their own words”. He said:
“There is a line between guiding teachers about
a topic and telling, giving them more than hints,
clear steers, about what will be in the test.”

Exam boards: WJEC chief examiners caught on film
telling teachers what is in next year's GCSE
history paper
An undercover investigation by The Telegraph has
revealed how exam boards are 'cheating' by helping
teachers at secretive coaching seminars which cost
hundreds of pounds to attend.
Undercover reporters went to 13 meetings organised
by boards used by English schools and found that
teachers were given information about future
questions, areas of the syllabus that would be
assessed and specific words or facts students
should use to answer in questions to win marks.

Secret filming at a WJEC course in London for GCSE
history last month shows how teachers were told by
Paul Evans, one of the chief examiners of the
course, that the compulsory question for section A
of the exam "goes through a cycle".

A system in which exam boards aggressively compete
with one another to win “business” from
schools is exposed – leading to fears that those
offering to help teachers obtain the highest
grades will make higher revenues as their tests
become more popular.

The Telegraph showed the video to the former
assistant chief executive of the exam regulator
QCA, Geoff Lucas. He said he was shocked by the
findings.

Schools’ spending on exam fees has almost
doubled in recent times – going from £154
million in 2002/3 to £302.6 million in 2009/10.

Schools claim the system is becoming unworkable
and some say they have having to employ two exam
officers to deal with the paperwork.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has ordered
the regulator, Ofqual, to investigate the
Telegraph's findings.

He has also indicated that he is concerned about
the commercialisation of the exam system
potentially driving down standards.

Are you a teacher or examiner with concerns over
workings of exam boards? Please email your
experiences to examboards@telegraph.co.uk

Exam boards: how system became international
money-spinner
The examinations system has evolved over the last
hundred years or so from a cottage industry into a
multi-million pound international business.

Where once a small number of teenagers sat a
handful of school leaving tests, upwards of a
million young people can now choose between more
than 15,000 different qualifications, covering
anything from history to hair and beauty.

The expansion can be seen as a reflection of the
changing face of modern education and the need to
meet the demands of a rapidly developing
skills-based economy.

But in recent years, the system has also attracted
criticism from educationalists who claim it has
been fed by a culture of league tables,
high-stakes targets and politically-motivated
meddling with tests themselves.

Indeed, exams now account for the second biggest
cost to schools after staffing.

In some large secondaries, heads can spend
anything upwards of £300,000 entering pupils for
tests, sending teachers on revision courses and
purchasing text books and practice exam guides.

Like many head teachers, Rob Pritchard, from St
Mary’s Menston, near Ilkley, has been forced to
employ a team of exam officers simply to handle
test administration.

“The system over the last few years has become
so bloated. It is a massive industry, which
schools find very difficult to navigate,” he
told the Telegraph.

“It used to be the case that sorting out exams
took a couple of hours, now we have full-time exam
officers who do nothing except administer
exams.”

This has inevitably turned into a huge money
spinner for Britain’s multiple exam boards who
not only set tests, but sell books and stage
seminars for schools themselves. Last year,
secondary schools alone spent £302.6m on
examination fees, compared with £154m in 2002/3.

Are you a teacher or examiner with concerns over
workings of exam boards? Please email your
experiences to examboards@telegraph.co.uk

So how did we get in this position?

The separate exam boards in England today are
largely an accident of history.

In the latter half of the 19th century, a small
number of exam boards were established on the back
of Britain’s leading universities, administering
a largely ad hoc system of school leaving tests.

By the early 20th century, a handful of boards had
been formed around institutions such as Oxford,
Cambridge, Durham, Birmingham, Bristol and the
University of London. One of the biggest – the
Northern Universities Joint Matriculation Board
– was founded by universities in Manchester,
Liverpool and Leeds.

Many boards offered their own qualifications until
the introduction of the national School
Certificate after the First World War and the
O-level and A-level in the 1950s – the first
time rivals competed to offer the same exams.
Indeed, the competition between boards was
exemplified by the Joint Matriculation Board’s
decision to drop the “northern universities”
tag as it expanded beyond its Lancashire and
Yorkshire heartland.

By the 60s, more than a dozen local exam boards
were also established by local authorities –
creating a complex web of multiple awarding
bodies.

The system was only largely consolidated by the
80s and 90s with the establishment of four
separate regional groups in England and a further
two in Wales and Northern Ireland.

England’s three main boards – AQA, Edexcel and
OCR – were then formed in the 90s following a
further series of mergers in the wake of the
introduction of GCSEs by the Conservatives.

In recent years, these organisations – and
dozens of others offering alternative
qualifications often in practical disciplines –
have ballooned in size on the back of a rapidly
expanding examinations system in schools.

According to latest figures from Ofqual, the exams
regulator, some 15,400 different courses were
listed on its “Register of Regulated
Qualifications” in 2009/10 – more than three
times the total in 2000.

Educationalists claim many schools have been
tempted to push pupils onto “easier”
qualifications as an alternative to GCSEs and
A-levels to inflate their position in league
tables.

Last year, more than three-quarters of teenagers
finished compulsory education with five A* to C
grades in any subject, but that figure collapsed
to little over half when passes in qualifications
such as BTECs and GNVQs were stripped out.

The examinations culture in schools has been
fuelled further by the rise in the number of
students re-sitting their exams to get into
university. Recent figures published by the
Coalition showed that as many as three-quarters of
A-level students re-sat one unit in 2009.

Schools approached by The Daily Telegraph told how
this had driven up costs.

One school said that the bill for exams had risen
from £70,000 to £130,000 in the last few years
and it had to employ full-time exam officers.
Another school said that the exam costs had been
rising at the rate of £20,000 a year and now came
to around £200,000 for 250 students.

Source - Telegraph

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