News story: Consultation into strengthening teacher-examiner safeguards

Ofqual has today (14 March 2018) set out how it intends to strengthen its regulation of
awarding organisations’ involvement of teachers in the development of confidential
assessment materials. Today’s consultation reflects detailed analysis of existing
processes and extensive discussions with awarding organsiations, examiners, teachers,
students and parents. The new regime, if confirmed, will extend to all regulated
qualifications.

The proposals include:

• explicitly setting out in our rules steps awarding organisations must take to help
  protect the integrity of the assessments to which teachers have contributed; and
• publishing further statutory guidance to help awarding organisations understand the
  factors and approaches they should consider when deciding how to comply with the
  rules.

Consistent with these proposals, teachers will continue to be able to write assessments and
have access to confidential materials. However, awarding organisations must maintain up to
date records of all conflicts of interest relating to teachers who have seen confidential
assessment materials. And they must review their safeguards such that they are appropriate
and proportionate to:

• effectively mitigate the risks of using teachers in the development of assessment
  materials, for example by making sure no teacher knows whether or when any
  assessments they have developed will be used;
• support teachers to do the right thing, through appropriate training and contractual
  obligations;
• detect malpractice, for example by sampling the work of teachers who have written
  exam papers to look for any unusual patterns of response.

We are also stressing that the way in which awarding organisations have regard to our
guidance will be taken into account when deciding on the nature and scale of any regulatory
action should a breach of confidentiality occur.

Timing

The exam boards who deliver GCSEs, AS and A levels and other qualifications used as
equivalents, such as the Pre-U have already written the exams for summer 2018.
Safeguards for 2018 will, therefore, need to focus on deterring and detecting malpractice
and on supporting teachers. These awarding organisations have published a joint statement
setting out their intentions for this summer.
Subject to the outcome of the consultation, and where necessary, we expect that all
awarding organisations will have made significant progress in terms of the safeguards they
employ by summer 2019, and have fully revised their approaches by 2020. This transition
period is necessary to avoid introducing an unacceptable degree of risk to the delivery of
safe qualifications.

Sally Collier said:

“Almost universally, respondents to our call for evidence emphasised the importance of
retaining a strong link between teaching and examining, and the benefit it brings to
assessment design. Our rules on confidentiality and malpractice are already demanding.
The proposals we have put forward today build on them and provide greater clarity about our
expectations and the implications for awarding organisations if information about an
assessment is disclosed by a teacher who has been involved in its development. There is no
one-size-fits-all solution to the challenge of maintaining confidentiality. However, the events
of summer 2017 showed how public confidence in assessments and, in turn, qualifications,
can be damaged if confidential information is wrongly used. It is essential that those who
take or otherwise rely on qualifications have upmost confidence in the outcomes.”

Background

• In September 2017 we announced we would review:
• the risks and benefits of the long-established practice whereby some teachers who
  write or contribute to exam papers also teach the qualification; and
• the effectiveness of the safeguards used to reduce the risk of a teacher who has this
  dual role disclosing or otherwise misusing information about confidential
  assessments.

We are publishing a suite of research and analysis today that provides context and support
to our consultation proposals.

They include:

• a summary of our call for evidence into the benefits and risks of teachers being
  involved in the development of qualifications that they teach
• interviews with teacher-examiners about the risks and benefits of their involvement in
  developing assessment materials
• a review of safeguards used to prevent disclosure of confidential material in countries
  outside England
• a review of safeguards used to prevent disclosure of confidential material in countries
  outside England
• interviews with students studying for AS/A levels, and parents of secondary school
  aged children, to understand their views on teacher involvement in writing exams
• research into the sources of, and ways of identifying anomalous responses in test
  scores.

ENDS