How do you become a Chief Examiner?

ChemHickey

I have been wondering for a while now if there is any procedure to become a chief examiner in a Leaving Cert/Junior cert subject? Must you have a PhD or masters or is it just years of teaching the syllabus?

Anyone with any experience or anything? Thanks.

randylonghorn

ChemHickey wrote: »

I have been wondering for a while now if there is any procedure to become a chief examiner in a Leaving Cert/Junior cert subject? Must you have a PhD or masters or is it just years of teaching the syllabus?

Anyone with any experience or anything? Thanks.

The Chief Examiner is actually a member of SEC staff, and their role is to oversee the whole examinations process for the subject through drafting, setting, translation etc. right through to correction and appeals.

The Assistant Chief Examiner is in practice the "chief corrector" for each subject / level e.g. LC English HL.

While I have no particular insight into the mind of the SEC in selecting Asst. Chiefs, any I have known have been (1) very experienced correctors in that subject and level and (2) very experienced teachers of the subject at that level.

They also need to have good organisational skills; good people skills (the Asst Chief for the most part conducts the marking conference); able to take useful feedback and adapt as a result (and able to differentiate useful feedback from chaff!); etc.

I'm not sure that a Masters or PhD is a strict requirement, though most I suspect would have at least a Masters; I doubt however that all the PhDs and EdDs imaginable would be seen as qualifying someone for the job without a real depth of experience as an Examiner and Advising Examiner under their belt.

ChemHickey

randylonghorn wrote: »

ChemHickey wrote: »

I have been wondering for a while now if there is any procedure to become a chief examiner in a Leaving Cert/Junior cert subject? Must you have a PhD or masters or is it just years of teaching the syllabus?

Anyone with any experience or anything? Thanks.

The Chief Examiner is actually a member of SEC staff, and their role is to oversee the whole examinations process for the subject through drafting, setting, translation etc. right through to correction and appeals.

The Assistant Chief Examiner is in practice the "chief corrector" for each subject / level e.g. LC English HL.

While I have no particular insight into the mind of the SEC in selecting Asst. Chiefs, any I have known have been (1) very experienced correctors in that subject and level and (2) very experienced teachers of the subject at that level.

They also need to have good organisational skills; good people skills (the Asst Chief for the most part conducts the marking conference); able to take useful feedback and adapt as a result (and able to differentiate useful feedback from chaff!); etc.

I'm not sure that a Masters or PhD is a strict requirement, though most I suspect would have at least a Masters; I doubt however that all the PhDs and EdDs imaginable would be seen as qualifying someone for the job without a real depth of experience as an Examiner and Advising Examiner under their belt.

Cool! Thanks Randy! Pretty much exactly what I was looking for! It'd be a dream :,-)

spurious

The 'Chief Examiner' part of the job would only be one aspect of it. They would be kept busy the rest of the time with all sorts of examination stuff.
They would probably also be Examinations Assessment Manager for a number of subjects, due to the cutbacks.

ChemHickey

spurious wrote: »

The 'Chief Examiner' part of the job would only be one aspect of it. They would be kept busy the rest of the time with all sorts of examination stuff.
They would probably also be Examinations Assessment Manager for a number of subjects, due to the cutbacks.

Ok! So there must be so much background work! Do they set all papers or do they chose papers made by assistant examiners?

MathsManiac

ChemHickey wrote: »

Ok! So there must be so much background work! Do they set all papers or do they chose papers made by assistant examiners?

See pages 7 to 11 of this booklet: http://www.examinations.ie/about/Setting%20Manual_rev3.pdf

randylonghorn

ChemHickey wrote: »

Ok! So there must be so much background work! Do they set all papers or do they chose papers made by assistant examiners?

They don't set papers at all as such, these are set by Drafter(s) / Setter (s) for each subject, though they would work closely with the drafters and setters. I *think* the Chief Examiner (i.e. the full-time member of SEC staff) is the one who chooses which of the two papers prepared is the primary paper and which is the back-up, but spurious may be more sure on that one. S/he will then arrange for translation, proofing of both versions, and so on. *

The Asst. Chief (as I said, for practical purposes the "chief corrector", and normally a very experienced teacher / examiner) will not normally be the Drafter or Setter, though I presume it has happened on occasion. Remember that the Asst. Chief is not an SEC staffer.

It's quite a complicated process tbh, all designed to ensure continuity of standards and a fair exam which is fairly corrected.


* EDIT: the CE, not spurious! :pac:

ChemHickey

randylonghorn wrote: »

ChemHickey wrote: »

Ok! So there must be so much background work! Do they set all papers or do they chose papers made by assistant examiners?

They don't set papers at all as such, these are set by Drafter(s) / Setter (s) for each subject, though they would work closely with the drafters and setters. I *think* the Chief Examiner (i.e. the full-time member of SEC staff) is the one who chooses which of the two papers prepared is the primary paper and which is the back-up, but spurious may be more sure on that one. S/he will then arrange for translation, proofing of both versions, and so on. *

The Asst. Chief (as I said, for practical purposes the "chief corrector", and normally a very experienced teacher / examiner) will not normally be the Drafter or Setter, though I presume it has happened on occasion. Remember that the Asst. Chief is not an SEC staffer.

It's quite a complicated process tbh, all designed to ensure continuity of standards and a fair exam which is fairly corrected.


* EDIT: the CE, not spurious! :pac:

Wow. you're all really helpful! I doubt I'd ever be good enough for a job of such calibre yet I suppose it's better to aim high! Their job seems a lot more complex than people make them out to be!

Thanks again mods!

randylonghorn

I think it's good that students know how much background work goes in, and what complex systems are in place to make it as good as it possibly can be.

No system will ever be 100% perfect, unfortunately; if it was there would be no need for back-up papers or an appeals process!

dmca93

These are more general correcting questions but I think they're relevant enough to ask them here.

1. Does anyone know how many scripts each correct gets? For example with English and Irish where roughly ~50,000 papers have to be corrected?

2. Is each corrector required to have a certain amount of As Bs Cs etc? And if so is it possible that someone could be in with a bunch of papers of lower standard and therefore receive a A1 whereas if that paper had been in with higher standard papers they would recieve an A2... this really only applies for the languages I suppose.

Thanks in advance!

spurious

Depends on the subject. I used to get about 400-450 JC History papers, more if I got through them quickly.

No, I didn't have to have a certain number of any grade, but as the correcting went on, the marking scheme might be adapted to ensure less fails, or slightly more As.

dmca93

spurious wrote:

Depends on the subject. I used to get about 400-450 JC History papers, more if I got through them quickly.

No, I didn't have to have a certain number of any grade, but as the correcting went on, the marking scheme might be adapted to ensure less fails, or slightly more As.

Thanks for the reply. Wow 400-450 is a lot of exam papers, especially with an exam like History which is just writing.

spurious

dmca93 wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. Wow 400-450 is a lot of exam papers, especially with an exam like History which is just writing.

I used to get up at 4.30am, walk the dog, start correcting at 6.00am, correct til 10.30am, take a break and correct again 11.30 to 1.00pm. Then I would finish for the day and very rarely do more later on.
It's not really a job you take on if you have kids or a life. That said, it was ideal for our Irish summers.

JC History isn't so bad in terms of the amount of writing, but you would be horrified at the number of people that leave out questions. It's the main reason for any failures at JC.
You're going along correcting merrily and then bang, no question 5 and/or 6. Crazy.

dmca93

spurious wrote:

but you would be horrified at the number of people that leave out questions. It's the main reason for any failures at JC.

That's crazy, even the thought of leaving a question out gives me palpitations.

And a final thing I was thinking about since finishing the LC, when do examiners receive the papers and when do they have to be back? In general.

spurious

The conferences are held next week (mostly) and the results have to be back to Athlone from the last week of July onwards.
Then it's all hands on deck in Athlone to get the LC results checked and inputted for release on the 15th August.
Only then do they start processing the JC stuff.

Bears and Vodka

A question that troubles a lot of us: there are many people involved in setting the papers (setters, drafters, translators...) and they will all see the questions on the paper. What kind of systems are put in place to prevent any of them giving a sly tip to someone from their family doing the Leaving for example? Is it just the fear of very serious consequences?

randylonghorn

There really aren't that many ... each paper will normally have one drafter and one setter, some will have an assistant setter as well. Plus the Chief Examiner, who is a senior staffer with the SEC, and a translator, who may or may not be SEC staff, not sure on that one, but I think so.

The drafter won't see the final form of the paper.

Two papers for each subject / level will be prepared in this way, with two separate teams.

As far as I remember, it's the CE who chooses which is the primary and which the back-up paper, and the drafters / setters aren't told that AFAIK. So they don't actually know whether it's the paper they've been involved in or a totally different paper which will appear on the day.

And there are a lot of rules regarding confidentiality and indeed anonymity. And remember drafters / setters will be experienced teachers and probably examiners who are well known to the SEC and have a strong demonstrable commitment to the integrity of the system.

Short of getting a computer to randomly set a paper on the morning of the exam at 9.15, and email it to every school for printing before 9.30 ...

And even that would have its flaws.

While absolutely no-one would see the paper more than 15 minutes in advance, a whole heap of people around the country would see it in that 15 minutes while it was being run off.

Not to mention the chaos when printers inevitably broke down in a few schools!

Plus what kind of paper would a programme in a computer produce? Even fed with hundreds of sample questions for each question, the overall paper would be a mish-mash with no overall coherence.