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The Perils Of Privatisation

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Canary42 | 19:10 Mon 02nd Jul 2018 | Education
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-44687294

OCR are a private company whose business consists of setting (inaccurate) exam papers.
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Aren't all the exam boards private companies/education charities? I assume OFQUAl authorises regulates them.
It was abad mistake and I do wonder how these things slip through the net but I suppose there has to be so much secrecy that they can't test/trial the questions widely beforehand. I remmeber a mistake on an A level Maths paper in the 1970s- it omitted the ² from v²- so it's not a new problem
//OCR says it has no plans to contest the fine.//


Quite right too.

Oh I got a well deserved A in Maff A level 1968 with:

q.10 x is 6 and you have a [blah de blah de blah - rubbish rubbish rubbish you know typical AB post - whining doesnt come into it], find x

and I wrote - x is 6 - given in the question

and then wise beyond years - I have answered the question so would like ten marks but if you are disinclined to , here is another fifth answer...
Oh hahahaha I must tell you
Maff B at the age 12 - the invigilator saw us making for our log books and said - no log books

so we couldnt do the exam ( trigsie and logs featured widely )
the maff master said - you should have called for someone
yeah twelve year olds,
and then wrote exam and said anyone who writes - "it is sine x/y and I am not allowed to use log books!" must get FULL MARKS
but of course no one had attempted the questions as we knew we would not be able to do them....

ho ho ho - those were the days !
>>> OCR are a private company

No it isn't. OCR is part of Cambridge Assessment, which is a brand name of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate which, in turn, is a not-for-profit non-teaching department of the University of Cambridge.

It's not their first error though
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-13627415
but errors were occurring back in the days of O-levels and CSE examinations too. (On a final review of a CSE Mathematics exam for the examinations panel I served on, I spotted an error that had somehow gone unnoticed by the twenty mathematics teachers who'd all reviewed the proposed paper before I got to see it. If I'd not picked up on it, all those students who'd chosen an incorrect response to a multi-choice question would have been awarded a mark for it, whereas those who provided the correct response would have been awarded nothing).
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Thanks Chris, I have asked Mods to remove.
In the old days various universities used to set O/A levels. Dpnding on the university papers had varying levels of difficulty. Oxford/Cambridge was reckoned to be the easiest whilst Durham was considered the hardest.

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