New developments in external examining

Richard Blackwell, LTSN Generic Centre

Presentation from the UKCLE/ALT workshop on external examiners, 6 June 2003

Richard Blackwell, Senior Adviser at the LTSN Generic Centre, reports on the latest developments in external examining at the national level. Note: this page is based on Richard’s slides presented at the workshop.

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What do external examiners do?

The Higher Education Quality Council review outlined the following roles:

• consultant – for example advice on course development – providing formative advice during the introduction of a new course
• moderator/critical friend – focusing on assessment methods, exam questions and papers, advising on classification borderline cases
• independent examiner – additional marker, oral examinations
• calibrator – facilitating comparison of assessment methods and expectations across higher education institutions
• auditor – checking institutional QA working, safeguarding the decision making process and integrity of exam boards, ensuring regulations are applied consistently, checking the validity of the assessment process

Emergent expectations:

• validator of educational design
• provider of public information on quality and standards

The Quality Assurance Agency’s Code of practice on external examining sees the main purposes as:

• verifying that standards are appropriate for the award or award elements
• assisting institutions in the comparison of academic standards across awards and award elements
• ensuring that assessment processes are fair and are fairly operated in line with the institutions regulations

A new expectation, emerging from the recommendations of the Cooke Report (2001) on requirements for information on standards on quality and standards, is to provide public information about standards through a summary report (ie a public assurance role).

Future external examining within the QAA framework

HEFCE’s final report on information and quality and standards in higher education calls for the following information to be included in annual summaries of external examiner reports:

1. name of university/college
2. award/award elements examined
3. name of external examiner
4. external examiners university/college
5. year of appointment
6. extent to which institutions processes for assessment, examination, and the determination of awards are sound and fairly conducted
7. extent to which the standards are appropriate for the awards, or award elements, by reference to benchmark statements, national qualification frameworks and programme specifications
8. extent to which the standards of student performance are comparable with the standards in other institutions with which the examiner is familiar
9. overview and comments/recommendations – 200-300 words on characteristics sufficiently significant in relation to standards to be worth drawing to the attention of external audiences. For example, distinctive or innovative programme elements and aspects which should be strengthened or risks which should be addressed.

HEFCE, Universities UK and the Quality Assurance Agency are trialing the proposals. The plan is for a systematic long term location of external examining in the career structure of academics, with:

• external examining introduced in new lecturer courses
• institutional mentors for staff who want to become external examiners
• CPD within disciplinary communities
• development programmes for people wanting to become external examiners via distance learning and portfolios
• institutional and/or national training for new external examiners

A task group is being set up by to develop a training/CPD programme and support materials.

There are valid reasons for looking at the external examiner system, and whatever happens the enhancement function should be preserved, if not enhanced? However, should we be separating the roles of confirming standards and enhancement? External examiners need to be more empowered if they are to be the guarantor of standards. The current system leads to inconsistencies and the new review process will impact on this. More guidance is needed on the role of the external examiner in exam boards, for example, can they change marks?

Enhancing external examining

Disciplines should build and support a community of practice by:

• fostering a community of practice for external examiners that is central to the health and vitality of the discipline
• creating opportunities for new people to enter the community
• keeping the network informed of developments in learning and teaching and the results of pedagogic research in the subject
• creating opportunities for external examiners to share knowledge about assessment themes/issues
• creating opportunities for collaborative research into assessment practice, for example developmental benchmarking

Last Modified: 30 June 2010