The English Examining Boards: Their route from independence to government outsourcing agencies

210

In these qualifications, designers wanted policy-makers, awarding bodies,
inspectors and end-users of qualifications such as employers and higher
education institutions to accept a high premium on validity and place less
emphasis on reliability, its supporters arguing that this shift would maximise the
credibility of the qualifications.

(Ecclestone 2003: 41)

It would seem on current evidence that the aims of the designers have yet to be
realised.

The matter finally surfaced publicly in October 2002 when Mike Tomlinson, in his
Interim Report into the September 2002 AS∕A2 grades crisis, commented on “the
longstanding misunderstanding of the difference between maintaining a standard and
the proportion of candidates meeting that standard.... This misunderstanding appears
to exist at almost all levels of the system, and in society at large ' (Tomlinson 2002a:
Conclusions). He might have resorted to more technical language and referred to the
confusion between norm and criterion referencing, as he did in his final report:

There is also strong support for the existing A level design principle that the
achievement required for an A level should remain the same from year to year
and reflect predetermined standards of attainment, irrespective of how many
students achieve the necessary standards. This is often thought of as "criterion
referencing”, although paragraphs 63 to 65 describe some of the difficulties of
applying pure criterion referencing to A level examinations and assessment. I
have encountered very little systematic support for a return to grading in which
fixed quotas of grades would be awarded to students according to rank order
rather than performance against a fixed standard of achievement (broadly,
"norm referencing”).

(Tomlinson 2002b: 7)

In her work on GNVQs, Ecclestone suggests that “...it is a populist portrayal of
norm-referenced reliability that now underpins comparisons in league tables of
qualification results between schools, FE and sixth form colleges" (Ecclestone 2002:

69). She perceives a fundamental schism underlying the debate:

...different meanings of ‘standard’ reflect disagreement about values and goals
in different qualifications and learning processes. This produces dissent and
confusion over whether assessment should be a norm-referenced measure of
consistent but selective achievement in order to promote reliable assessment

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