WAEC’s e-marking scheme to begin in earnest

The West African Examinations Council (WAEC) has revealed plans to extend the online marking of theory papers to more subjects taken in the West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE).

At a seminar to interact with examiners on the e-marking scheme last Friday held at WAEC International Office, Agindingbi, Lagos, the council’s Head of National Office, Mr Charles Eguridu, said the scheme is part of the five-year strategic plan of WAEC to improve the reliability of test scores in line with international best practices.

The pilot scheme started in 2011 with Biology theory papers of the November/December WASSCE.

“It is part of the five-year strategic plan of WAEC approved by the international board in March 2012.  The pilot scheme started in 2011 after we came back from an international conference in Australia in 2010.  There was a need to embrace the e-marking in line with international practice.  In 2011, the pilot scheme started.  Last year, we went fully online for Biology, Building Technology and Agricultural Science,” said Eguridu, who was represented by the Director of Administration, Mr Stephen Taiwo.

Delivering a paper on a study carried out by the council to determine the views of 373 examiners that participated in the pilot e-marking scheme, Dr Modupe Oke, a Deputy Registrar, WAEC International Office, said the aims of the e-marker is to improve standardization of test scores while reducing cost and saving time.  She said following research that showed wide discrepancies in the grades given by examiners in manual scoring, it became important for the council to device a means of ensuring that candidates are graded the same way by all examiners.

Dr Oke said: “A major challenge of manual scoring of essay and practical tests is reliability in scoring.  WAEC (1993) investigated the inter-rater reliability of Oral English assessment in the Senior School Certificate Examination (SSCE).  The findings showed a wide discrepancy in the scores awarded by the examiners to the same set of students.”

However, with the e-marking, Dr Oke said in the paper she co-authored with Dr Iyi Uwadiae, Registrar and CEO, WAEC Headquarters, Accra, that many of the lapses of the manual marking are corrected.

Throwing more light on the e-marker, Mr Chukwumaeze Oforha, a retiree of the council, who is credited for coordinating the start of the scheme, said it makes vetting of the examination scores even more real, eliminates the problem of missing scripts, and saves time, among other benefits.

“This system of marking does not give an examiner physical script of the candidate. Candidates’ scripts are scanned and uploaded to the server or cloud from where the examiners access them. With this innovation the issue of scripts misplacement is totally erased.

“Vetting is becoming more real with e-marking.  I used to be involved in manual marking and I know senior markers play truancy.  Some will claim they have vetted scripts marked by junior team members without doing so.  E-marking is following the conventional technique where there is always a moderation session, where the marking scheme is produced, where the standard is set.  The senior markers provide samples of what the scripts should look like.  The junior markers first mark those scripts before they are given the real scripts.  If they get three out of five questions wrong, they are disqualified.

“While marking, once a junior marker marks more than one question wrongly, the computer shuts him down.  He cannot continue until a senior marker intervenes,” he said.

Presently, the Computer Based Testing (CBT) facility of the WAEC International office in Lagos is the only e-marking centre in the country.  However, Dr Olusanya Da-Costa, Head of the E-marking Scheme, said there are plans to open regional centres in other parts of the country.

He also said the other subjects would be added to the three that are being marked online once their answers have been constrained (limited to specific details).

“Ultimately, all our subjects will be e-marked.  It will affect the way we develop test questions which is in line with best practices worldwide,” he said.

Also To facilitate their work, Da-Costa said the examiners involved in the scheme have been provided with modems and internet connection to mark in their comfort of their homes. He said this convenience improves their ability to mark more scripts and be paid accordingly.

“If you are able to mark 4,000 scripts at N18 per script, you know what you can get.  In the history of marking scripts, we have not had someone earn up to N100,000 before.  But it happened last year,” he said.

Chief examiner for Biology, Mr. Johnson Olufemi Asa, who teaches at Phemark Comprehensive College, Egbeda, said the initiative is faster and more accurate.

He said: “It is different from the manual marking; it is faster and more accurate. If an examiner makes one or two mistakes it stops him/her from marking.  But when it was manual, if an examiner makes mistake the best we could do is to at least look at 10 per cent of all the script the examiner has marked and then correct them. But this system will stop an examiner immediately it detects error.”