This comment by the OCR exam board, in response to a BBC story about GCSE mark schemes is a classic example of media-management: it does not answer the question being asked, but a slightly different one.
Candidates will always receive credit for answering a question well and our mark schemes do not hold back brighter students.
In the case in question a candidate’s answer had to be marked down because the candidate had not put a ‘key word’ mentioned in the mark scheme on her paper.
OCR does not at any point suggest that the story is incorrect, nor do they dispute the described operation of their mark schemes. They merely describe the system as ‘fair’ and assert that it does not ‘hold back brighter students’.
Of course, the key word here is ‘fair’. There are two choices when creating an exam system: either one can allow markers discretion, or one can set a very detailed mark scheme and allow little or none. GCSE and modern A-level systems tend to follow the latter approach. It not only allows, as the article suggests, examiners with less knowledge of the subject in question to mark papers, but also ensures uniform marking.
Discretion on the part of examiners will inevitably lead to an element of subjectivity in marking, and will require other steps to reduce its effects and ensure a uniform standard. This must include more extensive and expensive training for examiners, so that all mark according to a common understanding of the aims and standard of the exam; it will also include a more complex system of blind double-marking, to identify papers that require closer attention. Even then, any such system will eventually produce results with which a pupil or a school may disagree.
Even with its faults, a system that allows markers discretion, provided it is well designed, is almost certainly better able to reward creative, bright pupils. It is, unfortunately, less easily defended. ‘We took a careful look at the paper and this is the view our experts came to,’ is perhaps a harder position to defend as ‘fair’ than, ‘We ruthlessly and rigourously applied a single and very detailed mark scheme that allows as little room for error on the part of examiners than it does creativity on the part of pupils.’