Political vigour heading to examination class inflation

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A comparison figure at one of the country"s heading examination play has warned that his associate examiners competence be shying afar from questioning standards for fear of a "Ratner moment".

Tim Oates, head of examine at Cambridge Assessment, concurred that pressure from politicians and educationalists competence have led to "subtle class inflation" in A-levels and GCSEs.

He cautioned that determined attempts to repudiate this claim publicly, without questioning it openly, were "profoundly dysfunctional" and driven by fears at examination play of undermining their own qualifications.

"To examine probable class inflation, to publicly admit that there may have been pointed deposit and that a re-orientation of standards competence be required, sounds similar to a "Ratner moment"," Oates has created on the website of Cambridge Assessment.

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In 1991 the office worker Gerald Ratner caused a fall in the share cost of his trinket sequence when he pronounced the reason he was means to sell a decanter and 6 eyeglasses for 4.95 was "because it"s sum crap".

He compounded the repairs by observant a little Ratners earrings were "cheaper than an MS prawn sandwich but probably wouldn"t last as long".

Oates says examination play are not at risk of such a mistake pas and instead cites the e.g. of how the airline industry used self-criticism to urge the safety jot down "so significantly and tangibly".

He adds that examiners should be heedful of "blindly following orders [from the government] possibly out of a clarity of sap abdication or as a outcome of excessive pressure".

Oates"s comments come among flourishing approval that a little education have become easier.

The row has been sharpest in GCSE science. Earlier this year reported that Ofqual, the supervision regulator, had resorted to last-minute intervention in 2009 to overturn an enlarge in grades that was so good the watchdog feared it would be without protection in public. This was the second year running it had identified messy standards.

Last week Sir Richard Sykes, former rector of Imperial College London, recommended in a inform commissioned by the Conservatives that universities should have far some-more carry out over the environment of exams to say standards. The examination additionally urged that the separate of A-levels in to dual sets of exams AS and A2 should be reversed, with pupils instead sitting tougher papers at the finish of their dual years of study.

Sykes has found an doubtful fan in the severe National Union of Teachers. Its partner ubiquitous secretary, John Bangs, pronounced in reply to Oates"s article that there was a "need to question" the stream A-levels" "impact on standards".