For years I have resisted using the full mark range. It might be possible in Mathematics or Chemistry or even darts to award students a mark of 100, but surely not in English. There is, indeed, something vulgar about going even above 80, and why would one? How could one decide between 82 and 83, for example, or 88 and 89? It’s easy enough to see the difference between 69 and 70 — external examiners do it all the time — but once we move beyond 79 the air gets very thin.
Or that’s what I used to think. I’ve begun to have doubts not because I can now judge what an 88 essay might be like but because of grade inflation. More specifically, inflation in the numbers of students gaining upper second class degrees — I admit this may be more of a problem in some departments than others — means that we are fast approaching an absurd situation where we spend hours marking hundreds of essays and scripts only to give them the same overall classification. We might think we are making fine judgements as we debate whether the answer is a 64 or 65, but the reality is that in many cases it makes not a jot of difference. The student will get an upper second, and if he or she doesn’t quite make it, the exam board will seek to find the extra mark, or a special case will be made, or the external will be asked to rule.
None of this might happen if we abandoned classification, but that is unlikely to happen quickly. And it certainly won’t happen while we employ the kind of limited mark range that is found in most universities. The 40/70 range is so common that it hardly needs glossing, but it is worth noting how it has come to have a kind of mystique all of its own. Just 31 marks separate failure from a first, the lowest from the highest. It would be difficult to imagine how the scale might be more compressed. Even harder is how to explain why a first, in theory at least, can be anything from 70 to 100. Why, indeed, is the first class given 30% of all the marks available, while the upper second has only 10% of the marks? The sums get even dizzier when we realise that up to 80% of all students are judged against 10% of the marks.
A number of paradoxical points start to emerge when you start to play with figures in this way. First, whatever its merits, the traditional marking scale of 40/70 is no longer serving a clear purpose. It is no longer, that is, allowing the identification of any kind of real discrimination between performances. The increase in student numbers is perhaps one factor behind this. Once you begin to have hundreds of students all gaining a similar degree, the exercise of marking becomes not one of difference but of sameness. At the same time, the collective pressure to police the first class boundary inevitably means that there is a holding down of marks in the 60–69 band. And then there is inertia. We are so battered with change that clinging to the old mark scheme gives us a sense of still belonging to the world of scholarship and learning that we once knew, a kind of golden age before TQA, RAE and all that.
But change I think we must. Quite how I haven’t yet managed to work out, partly because I don’t really have a mathematician’s sense of the elegance of numbers. 40/70 seems to work because it moves gradually from the pass at 40 through the third at 45 and then into a balance between the lower and upper second before opening out into the spaciousness of the first range. But, as we know, the balance that kept first and third apart has gone. The crowds that gather under the upper second threaten to destroy both the lower second — for some reason, the third lingers longer — and the first. If this analysis is correct, then the problem lies with the upper second and that whatever mark scheme we might move to should deal with that problem above all else. In other words, we need a mark scheme that will correct the system rather than a mark scheme for grading performances.
The logic here may seem more than a little perverse, but I am simply suggesting a kind of economic correction or intervention in the market before it collapses entirely. And the place to intervene is the upper second category by giving it proper emphasis in the marking system. Briefly, I propose that we do, indeed, use the full mark range, but not quite in the naive way that educationalists have maintained, that is, by marking the firsts with extra high marks between 70 and 100. That will merely compound the problem as markers start to regard 70–72 as a borderline, with ‘proper’ firsts starting at 75. This is not the answer: it will simply stoke up inflation.
No, instead I think we should start to extend the upper second category so that it embraces a set of divisions all of its own. We can still have 40 as the pass and 45–49 as third class. And then 50–59 can still be lower second. What we need with the upper second is something like a low, middle and high upper second, perhaps with marks 60–69, 70–79, and 80–85. The exact numbers here are quite hard to determine for reasons I outlined above — there must be a kind of symmetry and balance, but the proportions are, I am sure, right. The three lower classes — pass, third and lower second — are balanced by three upper grades, while the first remains slightly aloof and out of sight.
With a system of lower, middle and high upper seconds we immediately provide our students with a broader set of differences than they have now while maintaining the fiction of getting an upper second. But such a system also keeps the 70 marker in play so that it will be some time before grades do regularly climb into the 70s and 80s as genuine upper second marks. It is only once that happens — perhaps another five to ten years — that there will be a move towards dropping classification and using the marks on transcripts. The paradox here is that by strengthening the system before it collapses we establish the possibility of transcripts. But a new marking system will also buy time to adjust the degree process to include yet more students. Widening access is about more than bums on seats.
Using the full mark range means using marks more fully to achieve diverse purposes. The marking system is a powerful instrument that has enormous power over students, but it can also enable the profession to re-establish its grip over standards and quality in a way undreamt of by the QAA. It will become possible to give very high and very low marks without seeming to be insane. Initially it may mean having to think about marks in categories — is this a low, middle or high upper second? — but that seems a small price to pay to bring inflation under control. The real gain, however, is that eventually we will be able to give marks that distinguish between the achievements of students rather than lumping them together endlessly in the 60/69 band. The second was once undivided, so that we would be merely following good practice and tradition by dividing the upper second. QED.
