The Explicit Transformational Syllabus (XTS) web page has argued, among other things, that conventional examination procedures invite massive cheating, whereas XTS examination procedures, relying on principles of random sampling, are able to manufacture unique but equal-in-difficulty examinations capable of stopping most of that cheating.
The Finger of Blame web page went on to focus on the Educational Testing Service (ETS) history of cheating scandals which continue right up to the present day, serving to reinforce the conclusion that cheating on conventional examinations takes place on a massive scale, and that the world's largest and most prestigious examination-manufacturing concern seems unacquainted with the method of stopping cheating, XTS, and is therefore content to allow the epidemic to continue reaping victims at the historically-established rate.
In turn, the Edexcel Cheating Scandal described below,
serves as a reminder that defective conventional examination procedures are not unique to American testing giant ETS, but are also practiced by the British testing giant Edexcel;
serves also as a reminder that conventional testing's remedy for an outbreak of preview cheating is to supply a replacement paper which itself consists of identical copies and so can be cheated on by the same illicit preview that disqualified the original paper;
serves further as a reminder that any replacement paper comes with no mathematical or statistical or scientific guarantee of equality-of-difficulty, and so can be expected to be noticeably unequal in difficulty, which in the current Edexcel Scandal turns out to be noticeably harder;
serves still further as a reminder that cheating is not victimless, but rather that it does create victims who have serious wrongs to complain of;
and serves finally to reawaken the question first posed in Finger of Blame, to the effect that if the conduct of examination manufacturers is negligent and causes harm, what is to stop injured students from suing them?
The current Edexcel Cheating Scandal is one whose nature has already been explained in the two links above. That is, because all copies of its upcoming examination were identical, when copies of the imminent examination went missing, caution made it necessary to suppose that they had been stolen and distributed for purposes of illicit preview. Below, then, is the Edexcel announcement of its latest cheating scandal:
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In the two news reports below, the Edexcel description of its replacement-manufacturing methodology is emphasized in blue font, as below:
"Every time we produce a paper, we carry forward the required standard through the design of the paper" (The Independent).
"This paper has gone through identical standardisation, design and checking processes to all other papers, including the one it replaced" (EADT24).
Edexcel maths A-level mix-up leaves students concerned for university places
Exam board Edexcel is facing criticism after losing a set of papers in the post and setting an allegedly harder test in their place. |
Suffolk: Fears tough exam could hamper university hopes
The university prospects of hundreds of A-level maths students in Suffolk could have been compromised because they were handed a much tougher exam than expected, a concerned parent has claimed. |
