7/15/2008 7:16:00 AM
FT 15 July
The head of England's qualifications watchdog has painted a picture of chaos in exam marking for key tests taken by all state school 11- and 14-year-olds. Ken Boston, chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, told MPs that markers had been given wrong information about the location and time of training, unmarked scripts had been incorrectly returned to schools, and markers had experienced delays in getting papers.The marking of the exams - Key Stage Two and Key Stage Three - has been outsourced to ETS, the education company. Mr Boston was speaking before the children, schools and families select committee of the House of Commons, to which he had been summoned to explain this year's exam problems.Key Two Stage Two results will be published today, one week late. Most Key Stage Three results will be later this week.
FT
SCHOOL TEST RESULTS FIASCO MAY RESULT IN EDUCATIONAL TESTING SERVICE BEING SACKED
The Times 15 July
The fiasco over delayed school test results affecting millions of children could result in the company responsible being sacked and forced to pay back tens of millions of pounds. Ken Boston, the head of the exams regulator, said after an emergency hearing of MPs yesterday, that the testing system was under stress and needed modernising. He added that problems were unlikely to be resolved in time for next year’s tests. Thousands of parents are expected to challenge the results, encouraged by the adverse publicity surrounding this year’s exams. This week Mick Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said schools were reporting “all kinds of problems” with marking, and told parents that they should not rely on SATs [national curriculum test] results as the sole indicator of their child’s progress. He urged schools to give parents teachers’ assessments of pupils, as well as SATs results, and advised that these be treated as “provisional”. Yesterday Dr Boston, the chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, claimed that the company, ETS, had failed to respond to 10,000 e-mails. His officials were forced to set up and pay for a call centre to cope with complaints to the company.
Times
WE SHOULD HAVE LEARNT FROM US EDUCATIONAL TESTING SERVICE EXPERIENCE
Alexandra Frean:The Times July 15
The marking of this year’s national curriculum tests for 11 to 14-year-olds has, by any measure, been a shambles. But it would be a mistake to regard the problem as a new one. Head teachers know only too well that every year there are problems of one kind of another with the marking of the 9.5 million papers sat by 1.2 million students. Results have been published late before, most notably in 1998 and again in 2004, when the head of the National Assessment Agency resigned after a delay of three months in getting out accurate Key Stage 3 English results. Many of the problems can be laid squarely at door of ETS Europe, the contractor that took over marking the papers this year on a £150 million, five-year contract. Problems began to emerge last October when some senior markers resigned because of new approaches to the way that the Key Stage tests would be marked. By early spring, markers were reporting a series of administrative problems, including ETS failing to register their contract details, difficulties in contacting the company by telephone or e-mail, delays in training and the failure of a system for selecting English markers. Once children had taken the exams there were delays in the papers being sent to markers, some scripts went astray and many markers received the wrong batches of scripts. In the past, marking was administered by Edexcel, one of the three main examination boards in England. When ETS took over the marking this year it embraced new technology, using online training and verification for markers and for recording results. In so doing it discarded years of experience and loyalty built up among the workforce of markers, who are mostly part-time teachers trying to earn some extra holiday money (the pay is £3.50 per script, plus a 50p administration fee).
Times
EDUCATIONAL TESTING SERVICE: AMERICAN MARKERS HAD EARLIER PROBLEMS
The Times 15 July
Educational Testing Service (ETS) Europe is being paid £165 million of public money over five years to mark key stage tests for schools. This is its first year in the role and it has already run into problems, prompting complaints from head teachers, MPs and the exams regulator over delays in returning test results. Other apparent problems have involved its software, helpline and face-to-face training. It took over the marking of 9.5 million papers from the exam board Edexcel. ETS Europe is part of ETS, a huge non-profit making American organisation with extensive test administration experience in 180 countries. In the US it is responsible for running SATs tests, but recently lost the contract for the Graduate Management Admission Test, worth a reported £100 million. It has a controversial history of alleged mistakes in its marking of American test papers. These included inaccurate scoring in an exam used to license teachers in 2004, resulting in more than 4,000 people failing when they should have been given a pass. In 2006 ETS announced a year-long delay in introducing revised exams for graduates. A spokeswoman for the Princeton Review, an education company, said at the time: “ETS has never met a deadline they have set. We are not surprised at all.” An ETS spokesman said recently that he had no knowledge of any previous problems in other countries. However, that ETS was given an important contract was heavily criticised. Nick Gibb, the Tory schools spokesman, said: “There was a clear lack of due diligence taken when awarding this contract.” Times
Lead Story | Curriculum / Quality Assurance
E-mail a friend |
del.icio.us| Bookmark|
Permalink |
Comments
(0) |
Post RSS