T.E.S. have discovered that Edexcel’s profits have risen seven-fold in three years and that one of Edexcel’s directors earned a whopping £450,000 in pay and pensions contributions last year – easily the highest known figure earned by anyone in British education.
In 2005 Edexcel became the first large examination board to be held in private hands when Pearson PLC took complete control. Edexcel was formerly a charity.
Pearson PLC is a media conglomerate and is the largest book publisher in the UK and the second largest in the US. Edexcel’s status as a profit making company has led to criticisms and calls into question conflict of interest within the education system, as a private publisher runs an examining board, which relies on set texts for many of its courses.
According to the report in TES, since its takeover by the Pearson publishing group in 2003, Edexcel has moved from a yearly profit after tax of £3.6 million to the latest total of £25.1m on a £203m turnover.
In January 2007, Pearson announced that it had agreed to acquire Harcourt Assessment and Harcourt Education International for $950m in cash. Harcourt Assessment is a company that publishes and distributes psychological assessment tools and therapy resources. Harcourt Education International is a leading educational company who in the UK publish as Heinemann.
In response to the profits announced by Edexcel John Bangs, head of education at the National Union of Teachers, said, “This raises a big question as to who this money is for. Is it for a private company or is it for the good and quality of the examination system?”
Here is the story in TES
Last month Warwick Mansell, a journalist working for TES, discovered that examiners who were remarking OCR psychology papers were told not to change students’ A-level marks after school or college appeals unless there are overwhelming reasons to do so.
This is of course particularly cruel for those students who had their papers badly marked the first time and damages the trust that psychology teachers have with OCR.
The advice for those examiners remarking said, “When scripts are re-marked, additional marks should be awarded (or marks deducted) only when a demonstrable error is found in the application of the marking scheme. If a degree of subjectivity is involved, very strong grounds are needed to change the original mark. If you are broadly in agreement with the mark, please do not change it.”
Furthermore, a number of teachers have e-mailed me noting that attempts at discussing this on the OCR psychology e-list have been censored.
Read the full story here
The following article was posted on TES in September, although I have only just spotted it. I was aware that the journalist Warwick Mansell was researching the article but missed it when it was published.
The main concern is regarding the inconsistent marking of the core studies 2 (2541) paper for OCR psychology and the article also raises concern about the marking of OCR coursework (2543). Unfortunately, as yet, there have been no responses to the article on the TES web site.
Soured by 3 years of erratic marking
Warwick Mansell
Published: 14 September 2007
A comprehensive is considering abandoning A-level psychology after what it says have been years of erratic marking by an exam board.
For the third year running, Wootton Upper School in Bedfordshire is in dispute with the OCR board over its grading of psychology AS papers, and it also has concerns over A2.
Juliet O’Callaghan, head of psychology, said the school could opt to teach critical thinking instead because of widespread concern about the OCR’s psychology marking.
Mrs O’Callaghan’s 59 students averaged E grades in the OCR’s essay paper, compared with Bs in a short answer module and an investigation paper.
Yet last year, the opposite was true. Students performed two grades better (averaging Cs) on the essay paper than the investigation and short answer paper, where they averaged Es and Ds respectively.
In 2005, the essay paper was again the top performer, with students averaging C grades compared with Es in the short answer module and Ds in the investigation.
Mrs O’Callaghan said bad marking rather than changed teaching standards must be to blame, since she had taught all parts of the course to all students over all three years.
The results of re-marks appear to back her case. In 2005 and 2006, the school challenged the marks of a total of 65 students and two-thirds improved their grades when their papers were re-marked.
Mrs O’Callaghan is also unhappy about external marking of A2 coursework. This summer, two students asked for a re-mark and both improved their overall grades from a B to an A.
An OCR spokesman said the board could not comment because it was still considering the school’s case.
Another sixth-form college approached by The TES has also had problems with this year’s psychology AS essay paper. Its students scored Us on average, compared with high Cs in the other papers.
A teacher at the college said he had spoken to three other large institutions, all of which had uncovered the same problem.
http://www.tes.co.uk/search/story/?story_id=2434571
