Examiners show teachers how to raise pupil's grades - for £200

Teachers attending £200-a-time seminars are being taught how to be "generous" in grading their pupils' coursework — without arousing the suspicions of exam watchdogs.

Examiners are telling teachers to "script" oral exams and give pupils a "swag bag" of key phrases that are guaranteed to score more points.

These are among the claims made in a book to be published next month entitled Education By Numbers: The Tyranny Of Testing.

One expert said today that while this was not cheating, the practice was certainly "unethical" and demonstrated why universities and employers were finding exam grades increasingly unreliable.

Professor Alan Smithers, director of the Centre for Education and Employment Research at Buckingham University, said:

"The gap between deep education and results is growing all the time. These examiners are, in my view, unethically contributing to that process."

Professor Smithers said examiners' contracts should forbid them from coaching teachers in how to exploit gaps in the exams they set.

But ultimately, the blame lay with the Government for its obsession with exam result targets, Professor Smithers added.

The over-emphasis on testing encouraged schools to behave like athletes taking performanceenhancing drugs, he said. "Just in the same way as drugs give a false impression of the capabilities of athletes, so does this kind of intensive preparation and teaching to the test give a false impression of abilities of children."

The book's author Warwick Mansell said he had been allowed to attend two seminars held by French and history examiners.

The French examiner told teachers to advise pupils on what to write in their coursework, by giving them a store of key phrases to write into their exercise books, ready to transfer into coursework later.

Some schools called this the "Burglar Bill swag bag", the examiner said, adding: "If you do that, you are in with a shout. Children ... like this idea of stealing."

Coursework is marked by teachers and then a sample of the marks is checked — or "moderated" — for accuracy by external moderators employed by the main exam boards.

At the French GCSE seminar, the examiner urged teachers to be "realistically generous" in marking coursework so as not to attract the attention of moderators.

The examiner told teachers to give pupils 42 questions and answers to learn over the two-year course — and then select some of those questions for the oral exam.

A spokesman for the Joint Council for Qualifications, which represents the exam boards, said: "JCQ awarding bodies take complaints or evidence which raise questions about the probity of the assessment process very seriously."