Exam marking outsourced to India

By Alex Singleton | 26 April 2005

The Economic Times of India writes:

Insular, Indo-phobic British commentators are trying to stoke a nationalist outcry. They claim Indian exam markers, who "can't read English", are marking British 16-year-old school-leavers in the most important tests of their lives, as outsourcing scales new heights. But, the UK's largest exam board, which is under fire for allegedly sending exam papers overseas, has defiantly insisted to The Times of India that India is on the cusp of receiving a huge, further assignment this summer.

When so many Brits leave school semi-literate, it is the height of arrogance to attack Indians who often have first-rate written English.

Why can't exam boards just use British markers? Because they find it difficult to recruit markers. Brits don't want to do it. Teachers' salaries have increased in recent years (the average salary for full time teachers in maintained secondary schools in England is £31,340). Increasingly, they don't find extra marking in their holidays to be their idea of fun. The situation could be rectified to some degree to by paying markers a lot more, but do parents (or taxpayers) really want to spend more entering their children into exams? Let us not forget that the exam board concerned, the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, is a charity, so this is not a case of putting profits before people.

The controversy is overblown anyway. The exam board seems to be only outsourcing some of the routine work of grading multiple guess questions. But we are likely to see much more exam outsourcing in the future. It is work that British people do not want to do. Instead of condemning the work of Indians, we should celebrate their contribution.