A-level Exams Mark Schemes

I have discussed before the problem that Universities have in identifying the brightest students amongst the increased proportion that are achieving A grades. There has been considerable debate about whether the relentless annual improvement in grades is due to a general “dumbing down” of the exams. I have been looking at some of this year’s Biology A2 exam papers and I do not believe that the exams are becoming easier. The exam questions today seem better designed to test knowledge and critical thinking compared to the A-level questions 20-years ago which mainly tested knowledge. So why are students doing so much better than before? I think the problem lies in the highly prescribed mark schemes that the examination boards publish for each paper. These are required to allow examiners to mark each paper with a level of consistency but it also means that the students tend to revise the mark schemes rather than the subject itself. The number of questions that can be asked by the exam boards is somewhat limited and similar questions crop up year after year. The students learn the key points on the mark scheme for these questions and get full marks. Some students even believe that if a key point is not on the mark scheme, then it is not correct even though it might be a correct biological point. There are a few ways in which exam boards could improve the exams to allow a better discrimination of each student. Firstly, new questions need to be set each year that have not been used before so that there is no published mark scheme available. Secondly, the questions should try to get the students to reason/think and come up with sensible answers that might not be included in the syllabus. Examiners should be prepared to accept sensible answers even if they are not on the official mark scheme. AQA questions asking for a “suggested” answer are good at this. Finally, horror of horrors, perhaps the exam boards should stop publishing mark schemes so that the students have to revise the subject rather than the answers just like we had to do in the past.