In last week’s TES, Madeleine Brettingham has a go at examiner-authors for breaking rules designed to “preserve the integrity of the exam system and prevent corruption”. Two weeks ago, it was Warwick Mansell who exposed examiner-presenters for telling teachers and pupils exam board “secrets” in “how to beat the GCSE system”.
Well, maybe, if very particular guidelines are breached. But as someone who has acted in all these capacities over a number of years, I am not sure how many “secrets” there are to give away any longer in today’s very transparent world of widely available subject specifications, specimen papers, mark schemes, lesson plans, marked examples, examiners’ reports, appeals against results, and so on. It’s all out there, and mostly published by the exam boards themselves or their publishing partners.
I don’t have a problem with that, except that I think there is too much of it. But I take exception to being labelled as a cheat.
David Walton. Somerton, Somerset
