Schools IT firm RM signed a deal with the International Baccalaureate (IB) organisation to provide on-screen marking services for its range of qualifications. In recent months RM assessment, the company’s specialist exam services division, has been working closely with the IB, which sees itself as a rival to established assessment frameworks such as the GSCE examination. The announced memorandum of understanding paves the way for RM and IB to enter into a potentially multi-year marking support contract.“With the anticipated five-fold growth of IB programmes between now and 2020, at the IB we need to modernise the way in which we handle marking,” said IB director general Jeffrey Beard. Terry Sweeney, chief executive of RM, said: “We are delighted to establish this new and important relationship with IB, one of the world’s most important providers of qualifications. The IB is the first major international customer for RM Assessment and demonstrates that our e-marking capability has genuine global potential.”
What truths can be gleaned from this short but informative news release?
1. It would appear that criticism of the IB's onerous mailing costs, vague timetables and allegations of bias against its 5,000 or so "external examiners" all over the world who hand score IB exams, may be getting in IB's way to be truly competitive with the A-Levels and AP. The very exams IB has criticized for students relying on memorization, were always primarily scored by Scantron through ETS for the multiple choice sections. A few years ago, ETS Europe had an exam scoring incident similar to the moisture incident here in the U.S. and this gave IB the opportunity to pounce. Is IB going to increase the number of multiple choice sections and vastly reduce the number of essay readers in its force? We find it interesting that the only mention of this deal between IB and RM in the U.S. was on Forbes.
2. IB sees itself as a rival - well that's what TAIB has been saying for years, but IB supporters scoff at the notion.
3. Five-fold growth in 11 years? Nice pipe dream Mr. Beard, but not in the U.S. if we have anything to say about it!
What truths can be gleaned from this short but informative news release?
1. It would appear that criticism of the IB's onerous mailing costs, vague timetables and allegations of bias against its 5,000 or so "external examiners" all over the world who hand score IB exams, may be getting in IB's way to be truly competitive with the A-Levels and AP. The very exams IB has criticized for students relying on memorization, were always primarily scored by Scantron through ETS for the multiple choice sections. A few years ago, ETS Europe had an exam scoring incident similar to the moisture incident here in the U.S. and this gave IB the opportunity to pounce. Is IB going to increase the number of multiple choice sections and vastly reduce the number of essay readers in its force? We find it interesting that the only mention of this deal between IB and RM in the U.S. was on Forbes.
2. IB sees itself as a rival - well that's what TAIB has been saying for years, but IB supporters scoff at the notion.
3. Five-fold growth in 11 years? Nice pipe dream Mr. Beard, but not in the U.S. if we have anything to say about it!