CLASS ACT HE JUNE EXAMS?


The key driver for the change in format is that IMIS is aiming for Ofqual recognition for its qualifications


the paper which will cover all of the Learning Objectives. But at the same time we wished to retain an element of choice to allow students to do well by selecting topic areas where they feel they can perform better. The way in which we have reconciled these two imperatives has been to design a two part question paper: Part A comprising compulsory questions and Part B providing a choice of questions. The overall length and conduct of the paper stays the same – they are all three hour closed book examinations taken under invigilated conditions at set times and places, just as now. However in future the examination will comprise eight


compulsory questions carrying five marks each in Part A followed by a choice of three out of five questions, each carrying 20 marks each, in Part B. You can readily work out that since there are 40 marks available for Part A then about 40% of your effort should be put in to that part (an hour and 12 minutes if calculated exactly) with the remainder of the time devoted to Part B where the 20 mark questions will be exactly similar to the 20 mark questions that you are familiar with on the present papers. Actually there is a bit more work involved with tackling Part B as you have to read all five questions in order to choose the three that you wish to attempt. On that basis you may wish to leave a little extra time to spend on Part B than the strict marks-time formula would suggest.


Looked at another way you have eight or nine minutes per question for the compulsory questions in Part A and a maximum of 36 minutes per question in Part B. Take out your thinking and planning time and it will be a bit less than that, but it’s useful to have these figures in mind before you go into the examination rather than trying to figure it out at the time and end up running out of time.


One last detail: the Pass mark will be 50% and that change will be reflected by the examiners in the setting of the paper – you don’t have to be smarter than before to pass, but attaining the appropriate level of performance will attract 50% rather than 40% as has


previously been the case. Along with that the Merit boundary will be 65% and the Distinction level will be 80%. Now let me turn to the examiners’


reports for the last examinations in June 2012. They included highlighting a number of weaknesses that were not to do with the quality of the candidates’ subject knowledge, but rather to do with the manner in which the questions had been tackled and the answers presented. There is so much in an examination which is beyond our control or limited by our ability level – the questions asked relative to what we have revised, our levels of knowledge, our ability to communicate well, simply ‘how good’ we are at a particular subject. That’s what an exam is all about – rating candidates on their ability and discriminating between them as being worthy of a Pass, Merit or Distinction with a particular percentage score. What is disappointing is when students pull themselves down unnecessarily by falling into standard examination ‘traps’ which could so easily be avoided with proper preparation. I have been through this comprehensively on previous occasions, so here I will dwell on just those factors which were reported by the examiners from last June’s exams.


The most common fault reported was that of candidates presenting answers that for whatever reason did not match the question that had been asked! Mostly candidates had written accurately and fully on the topic that they were discussing – the problem was that that was not always the topic, or the aspect of the topic, that the examination question was probing. This was reported in various ways by the examiners including candidates ‘not reading the question carefully’, ‘not answering the question asked’, ‘answering the question that they had revised for rather than the question asked’, ‘misreading the question’,


Volume 22 – Issue 4 |December 2012 41


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