As part of GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) reforms in England, requirements for assessing application in science increased. Setting examination questions in context facilitates testing application as students need to apply what they know and understand to a particular situation. This research explored the nature of the contexts…

As part of continued efforts to ensure inclusivity in assessment, OCR has developed a set of accessibility principles for question design in GCSE Science examinations, which has been applied since 2018. The principles are intended to help ensure that all students can demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and skills to the best of their…

In educational contexts, questioning performs a number of functions. These include facilitating learning in the classroom and the recognition of achievement through examinations and other assessments. Good quality questions are important to ensuring that these functions are achieved. This research focused on educational exams and used views from…

It is important for educational assessment bodies to demonstrate how they are seeking to meet the demands of validity. The approach to validity taken here assumes a "consequentialist" view where the appropriacy of the inferences made on the basis of assessment results is seen as central. This paper describes the development of a…

The process by which an assessor evaluates a piece of student work against a set of marking criteria is somewhat hidden and potentially complex. This judgement process is under-researched, particularly in contexts where teachers (rather than trained examiners) conduct the assessment and in contexts involving extended pieces of work. This paper…

This research investigated whether features of examination questions influence students with dyslexia differently to others, potentially affecting whether they have a fair opportunity to show their knowledge, understanding and skills. A number of science examination questions were chosen. For some questions two slightly different versions were…

This study investigated the functions of annotations, the role of annotations in markers' decision-making processes, whether annotations conform to conventions, and whether these vary according to subject area. Across subjects a number of scripts were analysed to survey which annotations are subject specific and which are more general. Twelve…