{"id":89932,"date":"2018-03-14T14:03:00","date_gmt":"2018-03-14T14:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=9a37ac270af5fff5b2b21b531fd4f0a2"},"modified":"2018-03-14T14:03:00","modified_gmt":"2018-03-14T14:03:00","slug":"news-story-consultation-into-strengthening-teacher-examiner-safeguards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=89932","title":{"rendered":"News story: Consultation into strengthening teacher-examiner safeguards"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>Ofqual has today (14 March 2018) set out how it intends to strengthen its regulation of<br \/>\nawarding organisations\u2019 involvement of teachers in the development of confidential<br \/>\nassessment materials. Today\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/consultations\/consultation-teacher-involvement-in-the-development-of-confidential-assessment-materials\">consultation<\/a> reflects detailed analysis of existing<br \/>\nprocesses and extensive discussions with awarding organsiations, examiners, teachers,<br \/>\nstudents and parents. The new regime, if confirmed, will extend to all regulated<br \/>\nqualifications.<\/p>\n<p>The proposals include:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>explicitly setting out in our rules steps awarding organisations must take to help<br \/>\nprotect the integrity of the assessments to which teachers have contributed<\/li>\n<li>publishing further statutory guidance to help awarding organisations understand the<br \/>\nfactors and approaches they should consider when deciding how to comply with the<br \/>\nrules<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Consistent with these proposals, teachers will continue to be able to write assessments and<br \/>\nhave access to confidential materials. However, awarding organisations must maintain up to<br \/>\ndate records of all conflicts of interest relating to teachers who have seen confidential<br \/>\nassessment materials. And they must review their safeguards such that they are appropriate<br \/>\nand proportionate to:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>effectively mitigate the risks of using teachers in the development of assessment<br \/>\nmaterials, for example by making sure no teacher knows whether or when any<br \/>\nassessments they have developed will be used<\/li>\n<li>support teachers to do the right thing, through appropriate training and contractual<br \/>\nobligations<\/li>\n<li>detect malpractice, for example by sampling the work of teachers who have written<br \/>\nexam papers to look for any unusual patterns of response<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We are also stressing that the way in which awarding organisations have regard to our<br \/>\nguidance will be taken into account when deciding on the nature and scale of any regulatory<br \/>\naction should a breach of confidentiality occur.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"timing\">Timing<\/h2>\n<p>The exam boards who deliver GCSEs, AS and A levels and other qualifications used as<br \/>\nequivalents, such as the Pre-U have already written the exams for summer 2018.<br \/>\nSafeguards for 2018 will, therefore, need to focus on deterring and detecting malpractice<br \/>\nand on supporting teachers. These awarding organisations have published a joint statement<br \/>\nsetting out their intentions for this summer.<\/p>\n<p>Subject to the outcome of the consultation, and where necessary, we expect that all<br \/>\nawarding organisations will have made significant progress in terms of the safeguards they<br \/>\nemploy by summer 2019, and have fully revised their approaches by 2020. This transition<br \/>\nperiod is necessary to avoid introducing an unacceptable degree of risk to the delivery of<br \/>\nsafe qualifications.<\/p>\n<p>Sally Collier said:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p class=\"last-child\">Almost universally, respondents to our call for evidence emphasised the importance of<br \/>\nretaining a strong link between teaching and examining, and the benefit it brings to<br \/>\nassessment design. Our rules on confidentiality and malpractice are already demanding.<br \/>\nThe proposals we have put forward today build on them and provide greater clarity about our<br \/>\nexpectations and the implications for awarding organisations if information about an<br \/>\nassessment is disclosed by a teacher who has been involved in its development. There is no<br \/>\none-size-fits-all solution to the challenge of maintaining confidentiality. However, the events<br \/>\nof summer 2017 showed how public confidence in assessments and, in turn, qualifications,<br \/>\ncan be damaged if confidential information is wrongly used. It is essential that those who<br \/>\ntake or otherwise rely on qualifications have upmost confidence in the outcomes.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h2 id=\"background\">Background<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>In September 2017 we announced we would review:<\/li>\n<li>the risks and benefits of the long-established practice whereby some teachers who<br \/>\nwrite or contribute to exam papers also teach the qualification; and<\/li>\n<li>the effectiveness of the safeguards used to reduce the risk of a teacher who has this<br \/>\ndual role disclosing or otherwise misusing information about confidential<br \/>\nassessments.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We are publishing a suite of research and analysis today that provides context and support<br \/>\nto our consultation proposals.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/consultations\/consultation-teacher-involvement-in-the-development-of-confidential-assessment-materials\">The proposals include<\/a> :<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>a summary of our call for evidence into the benefits and risks of teachers being<br \/>\ninvolved in the development of qualifications that they teach<\/li>\n<li>interviews with teacher-examiners about the risks and benefits of their involvement in<br \/>\ndeveloping assessment materials<\/li>\n<li>a review of safeguards used to prevent disclosure of confidential material in countries<br \/>\noutside England<\/li>\n<li>a review of safeguards used to prevent disclosure of confidential material in countries<br \/>\noutside England<\/li>\n<li>interviews with students studying for AS\/A levels, and parents of secondary school<br \/>\naged children, to understand their views on teacher involvement in writing exams<\/li>\n<li>research into the sources of, and ways of identifying anomalous responses in test<br \/>\nscores<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Proposals to strengthen regulation of the use of teachers as examiners.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89932"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=89932"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89932\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89974,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89932\/revisions\/89974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=89932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=89932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=89932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}