Becoming An Examiner

Teachers often like to talk about those mythical creatures called ‘examiners’ who hold such power over students’ fates and futures: ‘Be careful – the examiner won’t like that phrase’ or ‘Make sure the examiner can read your handwriting, you might lose marks!’ But do we give much thought to who these people are or what they actually do? What do they do when they are not handing out marks in a grudging fashion over the summer?

Well most of them are teachers of course. Examining is a good way for teachers to earn extra money, but not only that, it is an excellent way for teachers to learn more about their own subjects and what the exam boards truly require of students. By becoming an examiner a teacher becomes much more expert in applying those often seemingly vague or convoluted mark schemes to students’ answers, and can give much better guidance to their students as a result.

I decided to become an examiner because I knew that it would improve my teaching and tutoring. There is an application process: you have to submit details of your teaching experience, references, which subjects/units you would prefer to mark. I jumped through this hoop and was rewarded with a contract from my chosen exam board to mark in the summer exam series.

When I received the contract I was delighted but my jaw dropped a little when I saw that it was to mark items’. Thinking this meant I would be marking 400 full papers I did a swift calculation and reckoned that I would be spending most of the summer - days, evenings and weekends -slaving over these papers. Of course, a little examination of the finer print revealed that the contract was actually for a more manageable 400 questions (or groups of questions).

You see – when we talk about ‘an examiner’ marking your paper, in reality we could be talking about three or four different people. With the board that I will be marking for, when an examination is completed, all the papers are sent off and scanned electronically into an online marking system. The paper is then divided into ‘items’ that are distributed online to different markers. The idea is that the examiner won’t be influenced by their marking by a student’s previous answer. For example – if a student gives a weak answer to question 1 then subconsciously the examiner may mark them down for question 2 even though the answer was strong. So in theory at least, using different markers should iron out this kind of issue. The use of an online system also enables accuracy checking to take place throughout the marking process.

This brings us to a wider debate, about the quality and consistency of exam board marking, which there isn’t really time for in a short blog entry! We have all seen press stories or heard anecdotes about students receiving a D initially and being regraded to an A on appeal. All I know is that I do believe examining will benefit both myself and my students, and that when I mark I will be doing my best to be fair and accurate – after all a student’s university place and future prospects could rest on one or two marks either way!