A pioneering scheme will allow students to get their results online this summer, on the morning of results day.
‘Results Plus’ will enable students to view, onscreen, their individual exam paper scores and overall grade. They will see their actual marked exam paper showing scores for each question, and can view model answers to identify where they went wrong. Each student will also be able to access a personalised skills map indicating their strengths and weaknesses in that subject, helping them to improve their skills for further study or re-sits.
The project has been welcomed by students and parents alike: when asked which pieces of information students should have access to on results day, the majority of UK parents (74%) said that exam results should be available online on results day. The same amount - 73% - are interested in knowing how well their child had performed in a subject, compared not just to others in their class but to others in the whole country*.
Jerry Jarvis, Managing Director of Edexcel, said: “Our electronic marking system, ePen, is having a profound effect on how the examination marking process is managed and the speed in which it is done. But crucially, it is also enabling us to make important advances in how results and performance data is delivered to centres and students alike.”
Edexcel’s Results Plus pilot is being run with a small group of GCSE maths students in 2006, and the board plans to roll it out across more subjects in both GCSE and A Level from 2007. From students’ perspective, exam papers still look the same, they are marked by examiners on the screen with a mouse, rather than with a red pen onto the scripts.
Results Plus has been developed following the success of Edexcel’s Results Analysis Service (RAS), which teachers have been using (since the advent of onscreen marking) to access their centre’s results online on results day.
RAS allows results information to be downloaded onto a spreadsheet and provides links to the examination papers, mark schemes and examiners’ reports. It enables centres to compare their results against the national average, compare results by type of centre, sort results by teaching group or gender and make detailed observations about students’ performance in just a few clicks, rather than the manual trawl which teachers have to prepare for their governing bodies.
Sue Wells, Examinations Administrator at St Swithun’s School in Winchester, said: “It is brilliant being able to access scripts so quickly that have been marked onscreen. Especially useful is the breakdown of marks per question for our Chemistry A Level.”
Edexcel’s Results Analysis Services is available to centres through Edexcel Online site: www.edexcelonline.org.uk
While the Results Plus pilot is only available to a number of students, all students can get results day information and advice - including an explanation of examination slips - on Examzone: www.examzone.co.uk/home
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* Edexcel commissioned a survey by Tickbox.net, which was carried out from 21 – 27 April 2006. From a total sample of 1,294 UK adult responses, 822 of these responses were from parents. Of the parents who answered the survey, 66% currently have at least one child in full or part time education.
