Why am I not surprised?
GCSE results were "fixed" to mask the poorest performance by mathematics students in almost a decade, a senior examiner revealed last night.David Kent, a chairman of the Edexcel exam board for nine years, claimed that he was forced to lower the pass mark by about eight percentage points to ensure that thousands of students managed to pass the exam.
His allegations, reported in today's Sunday Times, will add considerable fuel to the long-running controversy about whether exam pass rates have been artificially manipulated. Those who maintain that easier exams and more generous marking have concealed falling standards are likely to seize on Mr Kent's statements.
Yes they are. I link to the Indy version of this because Times links don't last.
Do Times links disappear? What about this one?
http://www.transportblog.com/archives/000494.html
Patrick
I just talked to Perry de Havilland about this, and he says that the trouble is that after a few days, readers in foreign parts are liable not to get straight through to timesonline stories, but instead be made to pay, register, etc. We in the UK do, but not the foreigners.
(Sort of like the opposite of watching live Premiership football on regular no-charge TV.)
Ergo, PdeH doesn't allow links to timesonline at Samizdata. I followed the same policy, without knowing exactly why. Now I do know, and the policy will remain. If I want people to read timesonline stuff, I'll copy and paste it here.
"Fixing" used to be an automatic part of School Certificate in NZ. The theory behind it is that it's very difficult to pitch every exam at the same level of difficulty, so they assumed across the country the kids remained at the same level of skill and 1/2 of them should pass.
Which is unfair, but on the other hand failing because you happened to hit a harder than normal exam this year, while your big brother got an easier one than normal, is also unfair.
Sometimes there are no good solutions. I remember at school being worried about both situations.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
