Within the big visions presented in the Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, a specific element of the academic standards landscape has found itself in the spotlight: external examining.
Within a system predicated on the importance of academic freedom and academic judgement, where autonomous institutions develop their own curricula, external examining provides a crucial UK-wide, peer-led quality assurance mechanism supporting academic standards.
It assures students their work has been marked fairly and reassures international stakeholders degrees from each UK nation have consistent academic standards.
So when a Minister describes the system as “inward-focused” and questions its objectivity and consistency, as Jacqui Smith did at Wonkhe’s Festival of Higher Education, the sector needs to respond.
What external examiners actually do
External examiners typically review a sample of student work to check that marking criteria and internal moderation processes have been correctly applied and therefore that it has been graded appropriately. They comment on the design, rigour and academic level of assessments, provide external challenge to course teams, and identify good practice and innovation. External examiner reports are escalated through the relevant academic governance processes within a provider, forming a foundation for critical self-reflection on the institution’s maintenance of academic standards.
Education policy may be devolved, but the systems and infrastructure that maintain academic standards of UK degrees are UK-wide: external examiners frequently examine institutions across UK nation borders. Indeed, the system is also embedded in the Republic of Ireland, with Irish providers drawing some of their external examiners from the UK pool, of which England is the largest source. The system is also intertwined with the work of PSRBs. External examiner reports are often used by PSRBs in their own assurance and accreditation processes, with some PSRBs appointing and managing external examiners directly.
Tale as old as time
Scepticism of the system is not new. Over the last quarter of a century, there have been periodic reviews in response to critiques. The most recent of these system reviews was undertaken by QAA in 2022 in partnership with UUK, Guild HE and what is now the Quality Council for UK Higher Education.
The review compiled insight from a survey across 44 institutions and over 100 external examiners and senior quality professionals, roundtables with 170 individuals from across the sector, in addition to workshops with PSRBs and students.
It surfaced the importance of the system in maintaining the reputation of UK degrees through impartial scrutiny and triangulation of practice, especially when we know that international audiences view it as an important extra layer of assurance.
And institutions value the critical friendship provided, and the challenge to course teams which is not always achieved through other routes. External examiner feedback is consistently seen as important in enhancing teaching delivery and assessment practices, as well as upholding due process and internal consistency.
But our review also revealed thorny problems. The roles can be ambiguously defined, leading to confusion about whether examiners are expected to audit processes, assess standards, or act as enhancement partners. Standards can be interpreted and applied inconsistently – and institutional approaches to examiner engagement, training, and reporting can differ widely. Examiners often reported inadequate support from their home institutions, poor remuneration, and limited recognition for their work.
To respond to these problems, QAA developed external examining principles, and guidance on how they should be implemented. These principles represented a UK-wide sector agreement on the role and responsibilities of external examiners, bringing a consistent and refreshed understanding across the nations.
Where do we go from here
Given its embedded, UK-wide nature, the Westminster government will need to tread carefully and collaboratively in any “review” of the system. A unilateral choice to ditch the system in England would have significant implications. It would impact upon the experience and currency of the pool of external examiner expertise available across the rest of the British Isles, and would undermine the network of general reciprocity on which the system (like that for the peer review of research) is based.
It would also impact those PSRBs whose accreditation requirements rely on external examiner reports, and in some cases the ability to appoint their own external examiners to courses. To mitigate these risks, work should focus on further strengthening the system to address the English minister’s concerns. This should be sector-led.
St Mary’s University Twickenham’s recent degree algorithm report demonstrated that sector-led initiatives into these topics do lead to changes within institutional practice; their decision to review their algorithm practice in 2021 was in response to QAA’s work on the appropriate design of degree algorithms, done in conjunction with UUK and GuildHE through the UK Quality Council.
Using the same model, the Westminster government could work through the UK Quality Council to instigate a sector-led UK-wide review by QAA of how well the 2022 External Examining principles have been implemented across the sector since their creation. This would identify barriers in implementing the principles and surface where further work is needed. The barriers may be as simple as a lack of awareness, or might reveal more systemic challenges around an institution’s ability to encourage independent externals to follow a standardised approach.
This review could result in updating the principles or proposing more radical solutions to address the system’s weaknesses. Crucially, this mechanism would incorporate the devolved governments and funder regulators, ensuring any changes are done with them, not despite them.
An external red herring?
The apparent link between external examining and concerns over grade inflation must also be interrogated. QAA’s 2022 research found that only a third of external examiners were asked by institutions to comment on degree algorithms, and indeed further conversations with quality professionals suggested that it was not perceived as appropriate for external examiners to pass comments on those algorithms. Either that needs to change, or the sector needs to demonstrate that scrutinising external examining in response to grade inflation concerns is like changing the curtains because the roof is leaking.
If the core Government concern really is grade inflation, then perhaps another sector-led progress review against the UK sector’s 2019 Statement of Intent’could be in order. This could look at the sector’s continued engagement with the guidance around producing degree outcome statements, the principles for effective degree algorithm design, and the outcome classification descriptors in the frameworks for higher education qualifications to address broader concerns around grade inflation in a way that is truly UK wide.
One nation’s government extricating itself from these interwoven, mutually reinforcing systems risks undermining the whole thing. It would be another enormous and eminently avoidable risk to the UK-ness of a sector that continues to be seen as one entity to anyone outside of the hallowed halls of domestic higher education policy.
The best way therefore to preserve the continuation of a system that is deeply valued by institutions across the UK is for the sector to lead the critical self-reflection itself, identify its value and merits, and address its weaknesses, preventing a painful fracturing of the ways that academic standards are maintained across the UK.
This will ensure that degrees awarded by institutions in each UK nation remain trusted and comparable. As a result, governments, students, and international stakeholders can continue to have confidence in the standards of UK degrees.
