Exam board chief Andrew Hall Q&A session: Thursday 25 July at 3.30pm

From the TSR team:
Andrew Hall, chief executive of exam board AQA, will be joining us on The Student Room this coming Thursday, 25 July, from 3.30pm until 4.30pm for a live Q&A session. You can add your questions for him now and then come back here on Thursday to catch up with his answers. Andrew's personal message to the TSR community is below.

Hi, I’m Andrew Hall

I can see from the questions you have already asked me that many of you have worked hard in preparation for the recent exam season. It is obviously quite a while since I sat exams, but I do understand the pressures that you may well be feeling. As a father of two daughters who did A-levels a few years ago I know it is a stressful time, not just for students, but for parents and families too.

I’m glad to have this opportunity to answer your questions on a range of topics about how the exam system works. I hope I can shed some light on a few things and share some of my personal views.

I should just say now, though,I won’t be giving anything away about the results coming your way in August!

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 1

username234673

17

Everyone in the real world of work uses Google to confirm / check information when at work. I do it all the time if I'm not sure of syntax for programming for example.

Why should students not have access to the internet during an exam? There's a cat-in-hell's chance of them passing with no revision what-so-ever and it would help reduce the stress put upon students during the exam periods.

Original post by Andrew Hall

I can see why it seems to make sense to have access to the internet in an exam when people generally do outside the exam hall. The main reason we don't allow it is that we need to see students demonstrate that they have built up knowledge and understanding and can apply it. If they had access to the internet it would be almost impossible to tell what a student could do for themselves and that's really the point of a qualification.

(edited 10 years ago)

Hey Andrew, a question of my own...

What's the biggest challenge of running an organisation like AQA?

Reply 3

Bella-emma

How do u chose where to send the final papers? is it totally random or do u check that the people are related to the papers they are marking?

Reply 4

Bria331

6

Hello,
Why do the school or us have to pay to take an exam, is there any point other than it is a business?

Reply 5

tohaaaa

16

Hey Andrew,

Where does the money from re-takes/remarks go?? (i.e. where is it invested?)

Also, how long does it take to write a paper?

Reply 6

username1023895

5

hi Andrew and my question is :students from another country and they have stayed in England less than 5 years do they have any right to use a dictionary during an exam and are there exams market differently? I ask this question because am from Italy and I came to England 3 years ago I have always spoke English but not clearly until recently. Any piece of advice? :s-smilie:

Reply 7

ladymarshmallow

16

Original post by mikeyd85

Everyone in the real world of work uses Google to confirm / check information when at work. I do it all the time if I'm not sure of syntax for programming for example.

Why should students not have access to the internet during an exam? There's a cat-in-hell's chance of them passing with no revision what-so-ever and it would help reduce the stress put upon students during the exam periods.

Yes, and in addition should pupils be given the option of computers for exams?

Reply 8

electriic_ink

15

What's the point in having multiple exam boards? Surely by allowing exam boards to compete for schools' business, there's an incentive for them to produce easier and easier exams.

Reply 9

abzy1234

14

Hi Andrew,

I was wondering in this age of digital technology, surely it makes sense if more technology is used throughout subjects and examinations? I was also wondering why students are also not able to receive their results online, rather than receiving it directly from their centers; would you think this could save a lot of time and admin?

Reply 10

Solemn Rain

18

Hi Andrew,

What comes first - profit or the students taking your exams?

I have another question, what's being done to ensure mistakes are not made?

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 11

ghost_rebel

10

Do exam papers get marked twice in order to get an accurate mark,especially for subjects such as english and history?!

Reply 12

phaseshift

12

Hi Andrew,

What is your take on primarily essay based exams? I have now finished AQA Psychology A and can tell you (from a students point of view) that the 'mark scheme' for the A2 units in that specification are unbelievably subjective.

Do you think that subjective marking is the right way to be going for exams which could affect students' chances of entering university?

Danke!

Reply 13

J_W-x

13

Dammit, I came here to complain about C3 Edexcel. I shall leave disappointed.

I'll edit a question in

Are the people who mark the papers lenient towards candidates who give a good response but lean towards not actually answering the question? or is it extremely strict?

Original post by kidomo

Hi Andrew,

What comes first - profit or the students taking your exams?

I have another question, what's being done to ensure mistakes are not made?

Your school sends your predicted grade to AQA (More than likely different to your UCAS one) and if you achieve below by 2 grades or above by 2 grades I'm sure another examiner marks your script again to ensure the right grade has been awarded

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 14

ladymarshmallow

16

Original post by abzy1234

Hi Andrew,

I was wondering in this age of digital technology, surely it makes sense if more technology is used throughout subjects and examinations? I was also wondering why students are also not able to receive their results online, rather than receiving it directly from their centers; would you think this could save a lot of time and admin?

Following on from this point, wouldn't it be a good idea to, like it is currently in Scotland, implement a system whereby pupils can sign up to receive their results by text or email?

Reply 15

electriic_ink

15

Original post by mikeyd85

There's a cat-in-hell's chance of them passing with no revision what-so-ever

Hello sir, it is a privillage chatting with you.

I had a question regarding the papers, nowadays the questions papers are getting more harder each year and ask more application type questions. Some of the questions in particular for science related subject , that are asked in the exam are sometimes like university type questions. Do you do this to prepare applicants for higher education?

Also, do examiners only follow mark schemes? If there is a correct answer which is not stated in the marking criteria do you still award the candidates marks and do examiners want each single word as in Mark scheme in the applicants answer?

Thank you for the time to read this :smile:

Reply 17

Hype en Ecosse

20

Original post by ladymarshmallow

Yes, and in addition should pupils be given the option of computers for exams?

A related anecdote.

I was at a lecture the other week where the speaker was a leader in health informatics: his idea was that we introduce a learning health system via some sort of "knowledge cloud." This cloud would act like any cloud: a big bunch of servers that store information on medicine, healthcare and patients. Such that anyone with authorisation can access the patient information stored on the cloud. The bigger thing here was that, as it's a learning system, this cloud would be able to behave similarly to how IBM's Watson does now: computing information, outputting probabilities, recommendations and the like. So if a doctor inputs a prescription, the cloud computes it, and feeds back if it has a recommendation like "do this instead". The advantage of this is simply that the rate of published knowledge in medical literature is, literally, too fast to keep up with and far exceeds human cognitive capacity - computers don't suffer that problem.

His suggestion was that we alter medical education such as to augment practice with the cloud. That medical students would now train with the purposes of building a "scaffolding" of medical knowledge, which is filled in by this cloud. And students would be assessed while being allowed access to the cloud. So the idea of being allowed to use computers for exams is one being toyed with in medical education, at least.

His estimate is that we'd have this sort of technology by 2020. Mental. We'll see. :tongue:

I probably haven't done the idea justice as it's simply my vague memory from sitting at the back of that lecture. More accurate info, for interested parties, can probably be found by checking out the publications of Charles Friedman at UMich, who was the one to give the lecture.

(edited 10 years ago)

Reply 18

mynameisntbobk

18

What do you think about courses with 100% coursework or 100% exams so that those who learn differently are given a fairer advantage?

Not everybody can actually answer exam questions despite knowing exactly what they need to know, which surely can't be fair, especially if there are others who bluff their way through an exam and gets top marks.

Reply 19

Motorbiker

21

What is your opinion on open book exams?

Which do you prefer?

Do you agree that an open book exam is a better representation of actual understnaidng of a subject whereas normal exmas are just a memory fest/cram session?

I say this as an A grade student at GCSE/ A level that didn't truely understand a large amount but a day or two with past papers/notes cramming = A grades in everything.

Exam board chief Andrew Hall Q&A session: Thursday 25 July at 3.30pm

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