Exams too hard? Lower the standards.

Sheesh, this is terrifying. From the British Telegraph:

Ministers are particularly concerned about exam results this year, having failed to achieve their 2004 target of 75 per cent of 14-year-olds reaching the level expected in English. Just 71 per cent reached the standard, despite a multi-million pound Government strategy aimed at improving lessons in secondary schools. The solution:

Examiners marking [ the national curriculum English test ] have been told not to deduct marks for incorrect spelling on the main writing paper, worth nearly a third of the overall marks. Ok, let’s think about this a moment. Why do we (they) set national targets for student achievement? If your answer is the same as mine, then making the exam easier isn’t going to help.

(Headsup by the unreasonable man.)

Comments

Jun 9, 2005 at 18:06 • erik

and what to think about programming courses at the UvA: I once heard that too much people flunked so the lowered the amount of points necessary to pass the exam. This is one of the big problems of the universities in Holland: they get payed by the amount of people that graduate, not the amount of people that are enlisted ...

Jun 9, 2005 at 18:06 • tikitu

Not just here, NZ too. I was once peripherally involved in a total train wreck of a course... The teaching professor was under review, which ('cos numbers are easy) was based on the number of students passing. Realising that was going to be less than half, he first scared a bunch into withdrawing (without grade penalty, but also better for *his* stats) then lowered the gate to ankle-level for the remaining few to hop over.