Research and analysis

Implications of policy options on inter-subject comparability

A paper exploring 4 inter-subject comparability policy options that are available to adopt.

• From: Ofqual
• Published: 18 December 2015

Documents

Exploring Implications of Policy Options Concerning Inter-Subject Comparability: ISC Working Paper 6

Ref: Ofqual/15/5796

PDF, 231 KB, 33 pages

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Details

The following four statements illustrate the wide range of options that is currently available to us, should we decide that it is appropriate to adopt an explicit policy on inter-subject comparability:

1. No action should be taken to achieve inter-subject comparability through the grade awarding process (which would essentially preserve existing patterns of grade distributions across subject areas).
2. Action should be taken to achieve inter-subject comparability through the grade awarding process (which would lead to different patterns of grade distributions across subject areas than currently exists).
3. No action should be taken to achieve inter-subject comparability through the grade awarding process (which, again, would essentially preserve existing patterns of grade distributions across subject areas), but grades should be scaled subsequently to achieve inter-subject comparability post hoc (and these scaled grades should be reported in addition to the unscaled ones).
4. Action should be taken to achieve a plausible alternative to inter-subject comparability through the grade awarding process (which would lead to different patterns of grade distributions across subject areas than currently exist).

Published 18 December 2015