Colleagues,
In spring 2015 CAS Scotland carried out an extensive study of our members’ opinions regarding external marking of the coursework elements of N5, H and AH qualifications. At the time, 78.2% of respondents to a survey supported a move to external assessment. In May 2015, we passed our findings to the SQA, which can be read here: http://www.cas.scot/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/CASScotlandAssessmentConsultation-Report.pdf
In the recent Computing Science Review Report (http://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/files_ccc/Computing_Science_Review_Report.pdf) the SQA have stated that:
“We will investigate the possibility of moving to external assessment for the Coursework assessment task for session 2018/19.”
After discussions with the CASS committee, lead teachers and some of the comments on CompEdNet it is clear that not considering external marking until 2019 is simply unacceptable.
Due to this stance taken by the SQA, we would like a moment of your time to complete a short questionnaire to explore the following:
- Whether the consensus of Computing teachers is still to move to external marking;
- What proportion of our members would be prepared to undertake a role of coursework marker;
- What level(s) you could mark.
The survey should take less than 2 minutes to complete and can be accessed here: http://goo.gl/forms/zgLrpFxkRXFUVhli2
We appreciate that the SQA currently has a survey running (http://surveymonkey.co.uk/r/VVNLMXJ) and we would strongly encourage you to participate in this too. Our survey is to some degree a duplication of effort, but we feel that it is vital that we have quick, precise answers to the three points above in order to inform our next steps.
As ever, please feel free to contact us with any further comments or suggestions.
Yours,
Quintin Cutts & Mark Tennant
Co-chairs
Computing at School Scotland
quintin@cas.scot / mark@cas.scot
