Does the Gender of Examiners Influence Their Marking?

For many years there have been concerns about whether sex bias exists in various assessments. A literature review reveals that little if any sex bias has been found in UK national assessments at General Certificate Secondary Education (GCSE) mostly taken by 16 year olds and General Certificate of Education mostly taken by 18 year olds. Oxford Cambridge and RSA examiners, for three case study subjects, completed the Bem Sex-Role Inventory (BSRI). This self-report inventory measured the extent to which the respondents are sex-typed i.e. to what extent they have socially desirable, stereotypically masculine and feminine personality traits. The responses were used to investigate whether there was any:sex bias in the marking; relationship between the masculinity and femininity of the examiners and their marking of male and female examinees. It was found that there was one question in the English examination which was biased by 0.5 of a mark in the favour of girls. There was another significant result in English, the more senior the examiner the more generous the marking. These concords with results in other areas like testing English as a foreign language. It is concluded that sex bias should be monitored but is unlikely to be found.

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