Friday, May 23, 2008

Precision marking

A fuss in the media this week about comments from Kathleen Tattersall, chair of Ofqual about inaccurate marking of exams

There is here a classic confusion between accuracy & precision

A bomb may be aimed with perfect precision. It will only be accurate if it is aimed at the right target

Precision can usually only be achieved by the elimination of pesky human variability. In the case of exams this means, eventually, that both examiner & examinee must be able to know, in advance, which is the right, or at least the required, answer

So teaching must be to the test & the quality of teaching is judged by performance in the test. The aim of education becomes the production of young people able to parrot back to us those things which we already know, those views which we already hold

The system does not require the exercise of individual human judgement

It certainly precludes the kind of judgement exercised by Professor Smellie