Examiners Cheating on Behalf of their Students

A simulcast.

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.

We had a useful discussion and you can see the fruits of that discussion on the Times Ediucations Supplement dated Friday 20th April 2007: there is a story on the front page, on page 18 and there's an editorial on the subject on page 24: that editorial has the headline, Examiners should stop cheeating.

I am happy to say that this is not the end of the matter: there is to be another article on the coming Friday by another journalist from the TES. I am delighted to say that I have been able to provide some detailed evidence that is being used for this forthcoming article and I am grateful to Chris Sivewright for providing the contact details that got me and journalist in contact with each other: she sits at the desk next to last week's journalist!

I have been campaigning against the practices to which these articles relate and I am keen to see them develop further and lead to the outlawing of these grossly immoral and unprofessional activities of these unscrupulous examiners.

In case you think these examiners are not being so badly behaved then answer this question: have YOU and/or your students/children benefitted from such presentations and meetings? The chances are that you and they haven't. That means that you have automatically been disadvantaged as a result.

The second major argument concerns the fact that once an examiner says, for example, just concentrate on these 42 questions and you know automatically that the quality of education and learning have suffered. Full stop. Idle Jack will do no more and even though s/he may pass the exam, s/he will still know nothing except the answer to 42 questions. If you are happy with that then you are happy to condense 11 years of education into nothing of value.

DW