Abstract
An External Examiner system has been in place in the UK since the nineteenth century. It came to existence in order to provide public assurance that the standards of the new universities were comparable with those of their more ancient counterparts. The two main roles of External Examiners were to ensure that degrees awarded in similar subjects are comparable in standard and to ensure that students are dealt with fairly in the system of assessment and classification. Since the 1970s many changes in UK Higher Education have taken place that put great strains on the External Examiner system. The introduction of a modular credit based system and continuous assessment meant that the External Examiner could no longer be closely involved with all aspects of the assessment process. Furthermore, massification of higher education has democratised the External Examiner system. In consequence External Examiners now play little or no part in determining the grades of individual students but act more in as overall validators of the system.
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- 1.
It carries out subject reviews in Further Education colleges and of heath-care programmes under a contract with the Department of Health.
- 2.
The QAA was allowed to carry out so-called audit trails by which about 10% of the institution’s programmes were reviewed as part of the assessment of the effectiveness of the institution’s internal procedures. It now appears that the audit trails will be removed from the QAA’s armoury (HEFCE 2005).
- 3.
The Victoria University had colleges in Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds. In 1905 the Victoria University divided into three components based in each of these cities.
- 4.
The Open University used credit-based awards since its foundation in 1970. As a separate development, two polytechnics, Oxford Brooks and the City of London, introduced modular degree schemes in the 1970s. By the end of the century virtually all UK universities had introduced unit or credit-based systems.
- 5.
In most disciplines the majority of bachelor’s degrees are honours degrees, which are awarded in four classes: first, upper second, lower second and third. Many employers recruit only graduates with a first or upper second class honours degree.
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Lewis, R. (2010). External Examiner System in the UK: Fresh Challenges to an Old System. In: Dill, D., Beerkens, M. (eds) Public Policy for Academic Quality. Higher Education Dynamics, vol 30. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-3754-1_2
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