Chemistry exam paper mistake: No Reviser found
"In view of the evidence, it appears that candidates were not harmed by this mistake..."
A University report into why there was a mistake in the Chemistry A level paper has found that the Matsec Board was this year unable to identify a person who was eligible, qualified, sufficiently experienced and willing, to act as a Reviser of the paper.
“For this reason, the paper was not subjected to the high level of scrutiny typical of the review process,” the report says.
A person who was not eligible to be involved this year has already been identified for next year.
The University in a report submitted to the Ministry of Education, said Matsec exam papers are routinely checked by a Reviser, who is a person who is not part of the team of examination setters.
“All student scripts in Paper 1 which contained the error in question 7 have since been closely examined. It was found that the great majority of students addressed the question by giving improvised answers compatible with the data provided, and this actually suggests that they may not have noticed the error.
“A very small minority did notice the error and corrected for it in their answers.
“Very few candidates did not write answers to the question but these same students also left out completely several other questions,” the report says.
The university has already declared that all these students will be awarded full marks for question 7 to ensure that no one, especially those who attempted the question, is penalised on account of the error.
“In conclusion, in view of the evidence, it appears that candidates were not harmed by this mistake. No candidate appeared to have spent more than the allotted time on this question (approx 30 min) and the few examination scripts that were handed in with incomplete answers clearly belonged to the weaker candidates, most of whom did not even tackle question 7.
“It is likely that most students will actually benefit from the fact that full marks will be given for the question since, from past experience, the better candidates would have been expected to obtain between 8 and 9 marks out of the 15 in such a question,” the report says.