BUSS2 May 2011 - Ofqual assurance on exam results

Less than two weeks to go before we know the results of this summer’s AS and A level papers, and for AQA Business Studies teachers one key issue is going to be how their students have fared in THAT PAPER for BUSS2. As we now know, it was only one of 12 errors on various AS and A2 papers this summer, and Ofqual have issued a statement to reassure students and teachers that they feel that the measures in place are correct, in the circumstances. There is also a statement on behalf of all the exam boards from the JCQ - linked here.

You will remember that, in the BUSS2 case, there are two concerns about question 1(a) (ii) for which the correct data was not given - first that students could not gain those 3 marks, and second that they may have wasted so much time trying to find the data that they would then give poorer answers to the remaining questions than they were really capable of. After the exam, AQA invited centres to apply for special consideration for any students whose performance they felt was likely to have been adversely affected by the question. The Ofqual statement suggests that examiners would look at a candidate’s performance in other exam papersfor the same subject to see if a pupil might have been “significantly affected” by an error. AQA’s statement on their own website gives more detail of this;but these are the key points:-
AS level Business Studies (Unit BUSS2) – incomplete information in one question the link to this is here,

As the question, worth 3 marks out of 80, was potentially impossible to answer, we discounted it. We adjusted the other marks so that the maximum mark remained the same, ie 80.

Special consideration+

A process of ‘special consideration’ was applied in two stages to ensure that the students who took an exam paper with an error were treated fairly.

1. Routine special consideration

Where schools and colleges reported that students were upset by an error or spent too long on an affected question, we increased their mark by 2 per cent. These adjustments to marks were made before the awarding process.

2. Review of answer booklets

We used a form of statistical analysis called Item Response Theory to identify students with unusual answer patterns. It highlighted where students performed differently after an error, so that their answer booklets could be scrutinised by senior examiners to see if they merited any additional marks (up to a maximum of 5 per cent of the total mark for that unit).

If an examiner thought an answer booklet merited even more marks, it was referred to a senior colleague for further consideration. In all cases, if a student’s mark had already been adjusted as a result of the earlier special consideration process, this was taken into account so that the process did not doubly compensate them.

This does sound very reassuring. I expect that the excellent e-AQA system will allow some scrutiny of how it has been applied, but continue to feel that the best method is to request a copy of the student’s script - note the deadline for the priority service is 26th August, and for Enquiries About Results is 20th September.

In the circumstances, wouldn’t it be nice if AQA made the gesture of waiving the fee for copies of scripts for those papers containing the errors?