The self-moderation procedure : the development of a procedure to moderate standards between schools using free selection from a bank of objective items.

The Self-Moderation Procedure is a complete system, developed by the author, which allows teachers themselves to moderate their pupils' levels of achievement. In any subject area, the source of items for the special tests used by the teachers is a book (or Bank) of multiple-choice items, which must be written and subjected to pupil trial under the appropriate, controlled conditions. In use, each teacher selects a test of his own choice from the Bank; the test therefore is chosen to suit the teaching emphases and does not, as is usual in many examining systems, itself control those emphases. Involved in the Procedure is a way of treating the pupil answers to each test. By taking into account stored data from previous pupil attempts at the same items, a predicted group score is obtained for each award category (such as \Credit\"). This in combination with the teacher's forecast of the number of pupils he judges to be in each category allows a total predicted class score on the test to be obtained. This is then compared with the actual score which the class gains on the test and that comparison is the basis of the moderation advice. The Procedure was investigated with respect to several aspects of its validity and reliability in connection with three Banks which were currently in use at Grade 10. The studies indicated that Mathematics A Level 3 seemed to be well suited to the Procedure and that Mathematics Level 2 and English Level 3 also gave quite acceptable results based on more limited data from rather less usage. It was concluded that the Procedure had many of the properties of a good assessment system; it seemed to have fewer deficiencies and more good features than most systems currently being used for either external examining or internal moderated assessment."