School not sending home marked exams. Normal? Not normal?

[TheLovelyBoots]

My son's school does not send home marked exams, on the basis that they don't want them passed on to younger siblings. To which I say, they're a great revision tool - surely a teacher can rewrite the exam every year.

They were challenged on this at the curriculum evening this week by a very brave parent and firmly stood their ground.

What are your thoughts?

thanks.

The syllabus changes! Lazy teachers if they just repeat exams. The exam boards don't so the teachers shouldn't either. It would be interesting to know who the exam scripts belong to. The school or the pupils who wrote them?

I don't think I've ever had a marked exam back, and often there have been rules about not taking the paper either. I have found past papers very helpful for revision purposes (for major exams, not school end of year type tests), but once you've taken the exam there's not much point in looking back over it is there?

On your other point setting exams is quite a skill, and not a trivial task.

Trying to write a balanced paper that can be used to demonstrate pupil achievement and ability, which can be used in an appeal for actual exams is a long process.

I have written/updated several prelims and end of unit/ term tests. They often take several weeks to complete, having the right balance of questions. It is an arduous task with very little thanks. Having to re write a minimum of 3 tests per year for 6 years is a lot of teacher time that in my opinion should be better spent elsewhere.

Your children should however be doing detailed formative assessment on their tests noting the type of question they struggle with and setting target to improve on which are followed up on by teachers and parents alike. I send my assessment sheets home with agreed targets and ask parents to sign them showing they have been seen.

I would encourage you to ask for this rather than marked papers.

Thanks for your thoughtful replies.

I'll elaborate a bit - my son is in year 7 and sitting what the school describes as a two-year course for the common entrance. We're to expect very low grades in the beginning, and improvement as they progress through the two years.

I can certainly appreciate that there's a lot of effort that would go into writing an English or history exam. But I don't think math is that hard to write, and I think there's a lot of value in revising from them.

A school using the same exam allows comparisons to be made between cohorts, especially in schools that do not follow the national curriculum.

The school sounds entirely reasonable to me. They aren't talking about one 'end of year' exam but a two year programme of assessment papers, used regularly. A lot of work to replace!

Even with end of year exams, we usually replace ours on a rolling basis or as syllabus changes actually make it necessary - not just for the sake of it. There are always far more pressing jobs than writing a new internal exam when the existing one is absolutely fit for purpose, & tried & tested over previous years.

The school also won't want them pinched by private tutors, I'd imagine...

There are CE practice tests available commercially which might suit your purposes better - in Maths, extra practice at similar type questions is likely to be more use than looking over problems you've already attempted, I'd've thought.

I teach maths and yes, writing a maths exam IS difficult to do. Ensuring that there are a balance of questions covering the full syllabus at the right level is a time consuming task. That's why exam boards employ people to do it. Would you rather you dcs teacher spent her time marking, planning and preparing lessons that get the pupils to the right place, or would you rather she wrote 42 exams in that time? I say 42 because I teach 7 classes and each one of them is tested once per half term.

Thanks for the replies. Dragon I'm surprised to read this because I would have guessed schools were at this point using some kind of random question generator based on input like "year 7, advanced set, multiplying mixed numbers". Seems like something that could fairly easily programmed & reduce teacher workload.

That's not what an exam needs to be though, is it? If I just want to give simple questions then yes it's easy ti computer generate them, but that would be a pretty poor exam. We cover 3 or 4 topics in each half term. Year 7 this half term cover angles, probability and sequences. So I need 7 different types of angles questions to make sure I've fully tested the work we've done on angles, then 5 different types of question about sequences and a few different types of probability questions. That can't be computer generated, it is in fact quicker and easier to write it out by hand then photocopy it. The only reason I ever do any preparation on the computer is because I can then use it again with a similar class in the future, assuming the scheme of work hasn't been changed.

At DD1's school she gets back and is allowed to keep all internal maths and science exams / tests. This has been really helpful, as I can spot 'trends' of things she gets wrong in test conditions so I know what to work with her on.

She has also sometimes got back and been allowed to bring home marked papers from other subjects. I usually find seeing them helpful too.

We do actually let our pupils take their marked exams home, but I can see why schools wouldn't if they have a lot of families where they would be passed on to younger siblings. If you have seen the test before then your answers to those questions don't accurately reflect the answers you would give if you were answering unseen questions. So the teachers wouldn't know where the real gaps in knowledge are, because you could just have a good memory and remember that the answer to question 5 is 93% even though you don't remember the method of getting that answer.

We didn't get copies of CE exams home. They are probably using genuine past papers of which there will be a limited supply.

I don't think I've ever seen a marked exam paper from my children!

They're not CE papers at the beginning of year 7, they have to be diluted quite a bit. More like CE-inspired.

There are siblings in great numbers, it must be at least 80% having more than one child at the school. I agree the tests are useless once circulated for this reason, but was questioning the merit of re-using old test papers given their utility for revision.

Thanks everyone for your posts, I have a different view on this now.