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Exam assessments can be reliable. And this is how to do it

Exam assessments can be reliable. And this is how to do it

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 In my FE News piece of 28 March, I examined the statement that GCSE, AS and A level grades are “reliable to one grade either way” (Q1059 here ) – a statement made at a hearing of the Commons Education Select Committee on 2 September 2020 by Ofqual’s then Chief Regulator, Dame Glenys Stacey.Two days later, on 30 March, there was a hearing of another Select Committee – that of the House of Lords, relating to Education for 11-16 Year Olds, at which the witnesses were Tim Oates CBE , Group Director of Assessment Research and Development at Cambridge Assessment, and recently-appointed member of Rishi Sunak’s expert advisory group on teaching maths to age 18 ; Sharon Hague , Senior Vice-President, Pearson School Qualifications; Gavin Busuttil-Reynaud , Director of Operations, Alpha Plus, a service organisation owned by AQA; and Dr Michelle Meadows , Associate Professor of Educational Assessment in the Department of Education at Oxford University, and formerly Ofqual’s Executive Director for Strategy, Risk and Research.You can watch the full proceedings here, and that is well-worth doing, for many important themes were explored, mainly concerned with assessment. This blog, though, will focus on the replies to a question asked by Lord Watson of Invergowrie, inviting comment on Dame Glenys Stacey’s statement (time-stamp about 11:55:50).Or rather, it will focus on two particular responses, both made by Dr Meadows, the first being her statement that“It’s really important that people don’t put too much weight on any individual grade.”“People”, presumably, applies to everyone – students, teachers, parents, employers, admissions officers… . If these “people” should not “put too much weight on any individual grade” – and it’s “really important” that they don’t – then I wonder (and I invite you to wonder too) what it is that I should do with them?If you listen to Dr Meadows’s full response – and that’s a good thing to do, for it will put those words in full context – you will hear that Dr Meadows does not address Lord Watson’s question directly, nor refer to Dame Glenys Stacey’s statement. However, if you put those two together – grades are “reliable to one grade either way”, and “It’s really important that people don’t put too much weight on any individual grade”, then maybe a picture emerges.So don’t be surprised if, this August, a student holding an offer of ABB but awarded ABC asks the admissions officer, “ May I have my place, please? ”.HOW RELIABLE CAN EXAM GRADES BE?The second response by Dr Meadows that I’d like to examine is this:“ To actually get 100% reliability would be technically pretty much impossible without the most extraordinarily long assessments ”.What Dr Meadows appears to be saying is that the 75% reliability currently delivered is about as good as you can get, and anything better is neither possible nor feasible.I agree that the achievement of 100% reliability is indeed impossible. But I believe that reliabilities of, say, 99.9% or 99.99% are not only possible, but very easy to deliver too.WHY GRADES ARE UNRELIABLETo verify that, I need to explain why grades are currently as unreliable as they are. It’s very likely you know that already, so please forgive me for “telling grandmothers…”.Fundamentally, it’s because two different, equally qualified, examiners can legitimately give the same script different marks : one examiner (or team of examiners, if each question is marked by different person) might give a script, say, 64 marks; another, 66. Both marks are equally valid; there are no “marking errors”; everything complies with the mark scheme. This is simply a legitimate difference in academic opinion.If grade B is all marks from 61 to 70 inclusive, both marks will result in grade B. But if the B/A grade boundary is 65/66, then the student’s certificate will show either grade B or grade A, depending on the lottery of who marked the script.This effect isn’t rare. Ofqual’s own research, first published...
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