Ofqual publishes findings from investigation into OCR’s 2014 marking issues

OCR had to mark 900,000 more scripts due to education reforms that saw exam boards offer no January exams or re-sit opportunities. In addition to this, OCR faced added pressure from an intensive restructure programme over the 12 months leading up to the 2014 exam period.

Part of the restructure included introducing a more robust standardisation process that intended to remove inconsistencies, which in most cases extended timescales by up to a week instead of the two or three days as originally estimated estimated.

OCR also moved to a 100 per cent e-marking system for the time, which saw a number of functionality issues, specifically with the ‘scoris web assessor’ script marking system.

Crucially, OCR also removed approximately 120 qualification managers, who had been the primary interface for assessors.

The report found that the qualification structure was removed without a full understanding of how these managers interfaced with assessors, leading to a number of issues throughout the marking, including a lack of understanding of assessors’ availability and a lack of clarity in key roles and responsibilities.

Ofqual also found that there was a lack of understanding among key senior managers of the end-to-end process of marking and awarding, which effected their ability to see the link between scoris performance issues in early June and the potential impact on marking shortfalls and hitting deadlines. There was also no cross-business contingency planning or risk identification.

Commenting on the report Russell Hobby, general secretary of school leaders’ union NAHT said: “We welcome this report and the steps OCR have made in addressing concerns.

“It is essential that students can rely on the exam system after years of hard work, and we’d recommend that all exam boards read this report to learn lessons from last year.

“One of the issues raised was the OCR’s limited understanding of assessors’ availability, which feeds into the wider issue of capacity within the system. NAHT is continually working with the exam boards and other professional associations to improve and expand marking capacity in the system to address this concern.”

You can view Ofqual’s findings here