Teachers last night reacted angrily to plans to use a processing centre in India to mark the GSCE exam papers of North-East schoolchildren.
Examination board AQA is planning to have 360,000 GCSE papers digitally scanned and emailed 5,000 miles to a data-inputting centre near Madras.
The board claims the plan - for Biology, French, Geography, German, ICT, maths, Science and Spanish scripts - will boost the efficiency and accuracy of marking in this country. But teachers' leaders in the region have condemned the scheme as "marking on the cheap", and said it would only serve to cause added worry to parents and pupils at a difficult time.
They also predicted that it could lead to an increase in yearly challenges on results. And one retired teacher, who relies on
marking papers to supplement her pension, said the switch to marking online had left her deprived of a valuable source of additional income.
Workers in India are reportedly paid a fifth of British examiners.
Mick Lyons, NASUWT executive member for the North-East, said: "This is doing it on the cheap and I would suspect many parents and pupils will be extremely concerned.
"If you look at the profits these exam boards are making, why can't they pay a reasonable rate for people in this country, rather than using a centre abroad on the cheap?
"I'm just hoping there won't be a problem with the results."
AQA defended the plans yesterday as part of a drive to modernise the industry and use the latest technology to improve the yearly exam-marking process.
It insisted that the papers would not be marked abroad. Instead papers requiring basic, one-word answers, will be keyed into a computer by workers.
The typed answer will then be sent back to Britain to be marked by a computer.
The plan follows a trial of the process in January, when scanned images of 30,000 GCSE scripts for French and maths, were sent to the Madras centre, with satisfactory results. AQA also said it may use processing centres in any country, and even in the UK.
Kevin Rowan, North-East secretary for the TUC, said past experience of out-sourcing to cheap-labour countries, has often produced negative results.
He said: "In our experience, there have been problems. Even in the financial service organisations, where it is largely computer driven, there have been issues."
He added: "If there are jobs being created in India, it usually means there are fewer jobs here."
AQA public affairs manager Claire Ellis said answers would be "keyed-in" twice, by two separate workers, and any disparity would be picked up and examined again.
She said: "It's not just financial. It's all part of modernising the examination process. Inevitably there will be people for whom it causes difficulties, for whatever reason."
She said that other sections of the papers, including answers requiring any degree of qualified assessment, would still be marked by markers and examiners.
"The computer marking allows these highly-skilled examiners to concentrate on other sections of the papers. We will be able to get the final results more quickly," she said.
The Journal: Today's Voice of the North
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