This is a lengthy letter but it is a good summary for them.
At the time of writing I have had neither response nor acknowledgement from them.
I wrote the letter relatively quickly so please forgive me for any errors that have crept into it.
DW
By email: see distribution list below
11th December 2011
Dear Sirs Allegations relating to GCSE and A Level
Examiners
It both causes me sadness and gives me
great pleasure to be able to write this letter to your committee. The sadness
comes from the seriousness of the allegations being made against the various
GCSE and A Level examiners that are the subject of your special meeting to be
held on Tuesday 13th December 2011. The pleasure comes from being
able to provide you with significant information that will help you to
appreciate that a lot of people have known about the allegations for many years
but that they have chosen to ignore the allegations.
I have been researching and campaigning on
the matter of examiner irregularities for over five years and in that time I
have found a lot of proof of inappropriate behaviour. Moreover, I have made
Ministers, an Under Secretary of State, MPs, Civil Servants, journalists,
teachers, Examination Boards officials, examiners and others aware of my
findings.
I first came across allegations of
potentially inappropriate examiner behaviour in 2006 or early in 2007 and with
no significant difficulty could find that many GCSE and A Level examiners were
holding seminars behind closed doors in return for payment. These seminars were
held for teachers on the one hand and for pupils on the other. Many teachers
and others are clearly aware that these examiners were running these seminars
and many teachers did not like it: they felt that unless they or their school
or their pupils were prepared to pay the examiners for the insights that were
given, they were disadvantaged in public examination.
The majority of teachers and pupils did not
attend the examiner seminars but many of them did.
The rules of the boards of examiners
clearly state that anyone who is working as an examiner for them is forbidden
from announcing any association between their work as an examiner and any other
work they do. I found on many web sites that this rule was openly and easily
flouted: examiners boldly stated that they were an examiner in subject X for
Board Y … I gathered a relatively large batch of examples of these statements
and web pages and asked the examination boards to comment on my findings.
In spite of sending live URLs from genuine
web sites and thus proving that many examiners were selling their services for
financial reward and without respecting the demand of anonymity, the AQA Board
not only said that their systems were robust and that my information must be
wrong but they threatened me with legal action unless I withdrew some of the
claims I was making. What happened was that they had acted in their fury and
haste and their threat of action against me dissipated when they realised their
mistake.
I know the DfEE as it then was kept records
of my correspondence with them, via my MPs: initially Dr Evan Harris and
subsequently Linda Riordan because towards the end of 2009 they wrote to tell
me that I had approached them on this matter several times and each time they
were telling me that there was no problem, no wrongdoing.
The surprise here is that I spent a lot of
time preparing my case and whilst I never met Dr Harris I did meet Ms Riordan
and I spoke at length on the phone to a civil servant at the Qualifications and
Curriculum Authority.
In my personal blog, I have documented my
research and the responses of the various people whom I have involved in it.
The first entry on my blog in this matter is dated 23rd April 2007;
and in that posting I announce that
I was
called by a journalist last week who wanted to discuss the way that Britain's
GCSE examiners may be behaving. He was specifically worried that the
examiners who are marking our children's examination scripts are providing
private tuition and behind closed doors advice to teachers and students alike.
The journalist in question was working at
that time at the Times Educational Supplement (TES) and following our discussion
he had published an article entitled Examiners
should stop cheating. That article was followed by another article on this
topic the week following the first one, both articles appearing in the TES.
In March 2009 I posted more discussion on
this topic: http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/2009/03/level-exams-and-gcse-exams-for-sale.html
You will see from this post that the two MPs I mentioned above had been fobbed
off by various ministers and civil servants so that I felt driven to write the
following, quoting a letter from me to Ms Riordan MP:
On behalf of honest and hard working
teachers, parents and pupils I feel unable to support any government, any MP
and any examinations system that essentially is supporting the following
approach:
•
Elitism in education:
•
Exclusivity in education;
•
Encouraging examiners to
work ex officio for personal private gain;
•
Encouraging students and
candidates for examination to expect that they may meet examiners for their
chosen subjects for personal private directed guidance in order to gain an
advantage in an examination;
•
Cheating;
•
Immoral behaviour;
•
Unprofessional behaviour.
It is obvious that there is nothing more
for me to say to you on this matter since it is clear that the government is
fostering lower and lower standards. Moreover Secretaries of State, Under
Secretaries of State, Members of Parliament and those in a position to gain
financially from this situation are all quite happy to ensure that the
privileged few who can afford to pay will receive a better standard of
preparation for an examination than those who can't I cannot see the socialist approach
in this system.
Late in 2009 or early in 2010 I found Ed
Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families on twitter and I
started following him. I then tweeted him and mentioned my campaign and asked
him was he doing about it. Eventually he responded and suggested that I wrote
to him officially. I then wrote to Mr Balls and that led to my blog posting of 4th
February 2010: http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/2010/02/open-letter-to-ed-balls.html
In that post I wrote the following:
As is
my wont, I am crusading against corruption in the GCSE and A Level Examinations
system. I have been carrying out this crusade for several years now. Evan
Harris MP failed in this campaign. Linda MP failed in this campaign. Now Ed
Balls who is Secretary of State responsible for this area has fobbed me off by
passing my latest missive to a junior member of his staff.
I continued:
Here
is the latest ill thought out response from Whitehall. Firstly the reply to my
latest attempt at rooting out this corruption and secondly my initial response.
Thank
you for your e-mail of 9 January alleging corruption in the GCSE and A Level
examination systems. I have been asked to reply.
I
note that you have raised similar concerns with the Department on a number of
occasions over recent years. The awarding bodies and Ofqual have thorough
systems in place to manage any conflicts of interests inherent in the exams
system, and we have previously shared details of those with you. Ofqual
have also previously looked at the concerns you have raised. This being
so, I fear there is nothing I can add to the previous correspondence with you
from Ministers and officials.
Yours
sincerely,
HB
QCDA, Ofqual and Exams Delivery
In the clearest terms possible, I had been
told that there is nothing wrong: I sent proof upon proof, I sent web site
addresses, I sent brochures and leaflets and they told me everything was fine! In
my despondency at such shabby service I continued this post as follows:
Dear
H,
This
will not go away just because you think this matter has been resolved several
times. It has not. No minister, no MP, no civil servant has ever accepted that
examiners from UK Examinations Boards ARE ex officio making money by holding private seminars with
candidates for THEIR examinations in contravention of the rules of those boards
and in contravention of ethics and professional behaviour.
You
must have seen the articles The Times Educational Supplement over the last
three years or so, you must have read Warwick Mansell’s recent book on this and
related examination issues, you really must be aware that I am not a crank and
that I really do have documentary evidence that no one in the government and civil
service, including you now, is in the least bit interested in upholding GCSE
and A Level standards.
You
are wrong in your assertion that you have previously looked at my concerns.
Read my letters maybe but investigated no. I have been fobbed off before with
the most inane arguments. I have sent you PROOF that examiners are in breach of
their contracts with the Examination Boards and PROOF that these Boards are
turning a blind eye to them. All of this is in direct contravention of codes of
conduct, codes of practices, statutes and goodness knows what else. Here you
are fobbing me off again. It really won’t do. To be fair to some examiners,
once it has been pointed out to them that what they are doing is wrong, they
stop. Yes, truly: one examiner wrote to me with a profound apology and he took
down pages and pages from his web site because of what I pointed out to him. He
realised the error of his ways. In the meantime, however, his Examinations
Board, in its foot stamping belligerence closed its eyes and said the examiner
had done no wrong.
Your
thorough systems cannot be so thorough can they when it is as plain as the nose
on your face that examiners are walking all over them all of the time. As I
type this I can guarantee that there will be advertisements in many newspapers,
on websites and in mail shots at the moment in the UK advertising Easter
revision courses. Many of those courses will be run by and on behalf of
Examiners from the GCSE and A Level Examinations Boards that I am persistently
complaining about. Go to your library and reading rooms, go online, check the
mail arriving at schools and colleges all over the country. Find those
advertisements and then tell me I am wrong.
For
your information, I have worked in countries where corruption and academic
dishonesty are rife. I am currently working on a World Bank project in one such
country. I am here to attempt to install democratic systems that are founded on
integrity, transparency and the rule of law. Don’t you find it ironic that here
I am trying to teach people in undeveloped countries how to behave whilst at
home, the OFFICIAL LINE is that flawed and corrupt systems are allowed there
too?
I
told Ed Balls on his twitter account that I will not simply go away and I will
not. If I have to wait for this government to be dismissed I will. Shouldn’t be
long now should it?
Thanks
for writing anyway even if it was such a shabby, ill thought out and badly
researched email.
Following the above, I appreciated that MPs
were not willing to blow the whistle. I appreciated that Secretary of State
Balls had no interest in this matter and had dumped my evidence on a civil
servant so on 9th February 2010 I posted the following, http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/2010/02/level-bunkum-ii.html:
Following
on from my open letter to Ed Balls (Secretary of State in the Gordon Brown
Cabinet, one of whose tasks is to safeguard the UK's education system) I sent a
follow up the following day to the poor minion who had been given the task of
fobbing me off. Here is that response:
Dear Helen,
I have probably failed again with my
previous and relatively extensive response to your email so here is the
shortened version that really, really ought to make someone in Whitehall sit up
and listen:
Principal, senior and other examiners
for GCSE and A Level exams present revision sessions and seminars for personal
and private financial reward. These sessions are usually held behind closed
doors. The audience very commonly, though not exclusively, comprises candidates
for the examinations for which the examiner is responsible. Why do these
candidates PAY examiners to run these seminars? I wonder!
That this happens is a FACT. That your
“thorough systems” are allowing it to happen is a FACT. For goodness’ sake can
you get someone to stop this charade? Other examining bodies simply do not
allow their examiners anywhere near their candidates and for very good reason.
Only in British schools is such a system
allowed whereby the privileged few who are prepared to pay can be given
unfettered access to the very people who have set and will mark and moderate
the exam for which they are about to sit. If you can’t or won’t pay, you are
excluded. This charade even transcends the supposed State School v Public
School divide.
Helen: is that fair? Is that democratic?
Is this a transparent and acceptable system? Or is it, rather, corrupt,
unprofessional, demeaning and out of control?
I have spoken to a great many people on
this issue and the ONLY people who are prepared to defend it are the very ones
who are in a position to do something about it: you and your colleagues in
Whitehall. Isn’t that very odd?
I really do expect someone rational to
be given the task of resolving this issue and I have already passed along this
latest correspondence to a senior educational journalist who has been following
this story for several years now.
Best wishes
I never heard from any other MP, Minister,
Under Secretary, Civil Servant or Examination Board official again and because
of my work commitments I was unable to return to matter until last week when
The Daily Telegraph broke the story again: the SAME story.
I have persistently tweeted Mr Balls on
twitter over the last few months but I am not aware of any responses from him.
I asked him last week for his thoughts on the Telegraph expose and he has not
responded, to my knowledge.
11th December 2011: http://duncanwil.blogspot.com/2011/12/cheating-examiners-update-letter-to.html
Finally, in case you are not aware of it,
Mr Michael Gove has been aware of this scandal since October 2009: that is when
I first wrote to him and informed him of the allegations I was making. Mr Gove
did respond to acknowledge my letter but thereafter he remained silent on the
matter. On 6th January 2010 I
posted he following:
In
October, before I went on a two and a half month trip away from home, I wrote
to Ed Balls and Michael Gove in relation to the cheating and corruption
inherent in the GCSE and A Level Examinations system.
Balls
is the Minister responsible for education and Gove is his Tory shadow.
The
problem I have been campaigning on for a few years is a real one and I have
presented a lot of hard facts and evidence of cheating and corruption and yet
two MPs and various civil servants have been happy to turn a blind eye to what
is happening. I have even been threatened with legal action by one Examinations
Board who then had to slink away from their position when they realised they
had tried far too hard to bully me into silence.
These
wretched people who are presiding over this abuse of position and privilege
have to be hounded out of office and in the case of Gove, prevented from
getting into office. Neither of them has replied to my letters.
I
need a Tiananmen Square moment to get these people out into the open and this
corruption solved and stopped.
Yours sincerely
Duncan Williamson
Distribution list:
Select
Committee Members:
Mr Graham Stuart
(Chair) graham.stuart.mp@parliament.uk,
Neil Carmichael neil.carmichael.mp@parliament.uk,
Alex Cunningham alex.cunningham.mp@parliament.uk,
Bill Esterson bill.esterson.mp@parliament.uk,
Pat Glass pat.glass.mp@parliament.uk,
Damian Hinds damian.hinds.mp@parliament.uk,
Charlotte Leslie charlotte.leslie.mp@parliament.uk,
Ian Mearns ian.mearns.mp@parliament.uk,
Tessa Munt tessa.munt.mp@parliament.uk,
Lisa Nandy lisa.nandy.mp@parliament.uk,
Craig Whittaker craig.whittaker.mp@parliament.uk
Committee
Education Committee
educom@parliament.uk
Committee
Staff
Lynn Gardner: Clerk gardnerlm@parliament.uk
Elisabeth Bates: Second Clerk batese@parliament.uk
Penny Crouzet: Committee Specialist crouzetp@parliament.uk
Benjamin Nicholls: Committee Specialist nichollsb@parliament.uk
Ameet Chudasama: Senior Committee Assistant
chudasamaa@parliament.uk
Caroline Mcelwee: Committee Assistant mcelweec@parliament.uk
Paul Hampson: Committee Support
Assistant hampsonp@parliament.uk
