Electronic marking - transcript
Introduction
Roger Taylor, Chief Examiner
I do think that this is a stage forward, because if you've been marking manually for thirty odd years, now you've got the opportunity to see that you're going forward: you can see the immediate advantages from many points of view, from marking accuracy, from time and so on. I feel a little bit of a pioneer and I'm enjoying it.
Secure scripts
Sue Lancaster, general marker
Much less movement of paper work, much less likely to lose scripts in transit, much quicker way of operating the processing of the results.
Geoff Lancaster, General marker
It gets the marks onto the system quicker and it cuts out a lot of the moving of paper work about the country, examiners getting packets delivered through the post, marking them, sending them back to the examination board
How the system works
Andrew Bird, Deputy Director General AQA
The exam centre dispatches the packet of completed scripts to our scanning centre, operated by DRS for us. They then take the scripts and scan them into their equipment, create an optical image of the complete script and then allow that script to be distributed either as a whole script, or in parts, to different sorts of examiner resources.
Examining for the future
Andrew Bird, Deputy Director General AQA
We need to take the examination professionals with us, the teachers with us, to see this as providing a much better level of integration and control than they had been used to.
Roger Taylor, Chief Examiner
It's progress and that's the way we're moving forward. And I say from an examination point of view I'm sure it is going to be much more efficient and much more accurate.
On target for candidates
Andrew Bird, Deputy Director General AQA
It's important that we continue to assess and determine the right characteristics in our public examination process and we retain the confidence of both the public, and users of the results of our exams, in what we're assessing. The technology therefore needs to remain the servant of the process.
Voice over
AQA is committed to capturing all its exam marks electronically by 2007, and to increasing its proportion of electronic marking of scripts. This operation is proving a successful step towards these important goals.
The way forward
Geoff Lancaster, General marker
I've enjoyed the work, I've enjoyed working as part of the team and testing something out and watching it grow.
Sue Lancaster, General marker
You feel that you've got some input into how things are going to be developed in the future, and this is definitely the way forward
Andrew Bird, Deputy Director General AQA
We just need to remind ourselves that the ultimate customer for all our processes is the candidate who takes our exams, and this process I'm sure will provide a faster and more reliable result for them: that's what we're all aiming for.