More on A-Level marking
The Guardian explains how the British Government has put itself in the ridiculous position of claiming that although 96% of the students pass their A-levels, compared with 70% 20 years ago, standards are increasing.
Previously, a fixed percentage were passed or got a specific grade. Now the marking level is supposed to be held constant and thus the number reaching a particular grade can go up or down. Unfortunately, the marking level is not in practice being kept constant and the marking scheme is so inflexible that you are penalised for knowing too much:
In evidence to the Commons select committee inquiry into A-level standards 18 months ago, the head of one of the exam boards, Kathleen Tattersall, admitted that A-levels are neither norm referenced nor criterion referenced. Instead they are “soft criterion referenced”. What that means is that neither proportions nor standards are fixed in advance. It means that examiners can decide on a standard beforehand, but if too many people or too few then reach that standard, it can be adjusted. “It is a system that has served us very well,” she said. It may have done. But it makes a nonsense of the idea that there any absolute standards being maintained…...And in a sad illustration of just how narrow the marking has become, the eminent economist Lord Skidelsky failed a Russian economy paper when he took an A-level in Russian two years ago. The examination board said that his points were irrelevant, and that people who had too much knowledge of a subject often over-answered a question.