BY EMILY HAYWARD

IT has been suggested that GCSE exam papers could be jetted off to Spain or South Africa to be marked in an attempt to deal with an examiner shortage.

A leading exam board for the British GCSE curriculum, OCR, has been exploring the option along with their sister organisation who is already using overseas markers for the international GCSE (the IGCSE).

From this, it is clear that there has become an urgent need for more examiners especially following the consideration on the move towards an end of year examination as opposed modular exams.

In my opinion as a student, I believe there to be positive and negative points to this idea.

The use of overseas examiners will mean that more exam papers will get marked and may even speed up the marking process.

However, it could argued that if pupils are sitting a British GCSE paper, then shouldn’t be marked in the UK?

Furthermore, the papers that will be sent overseas, could provide jobs for the unemployed within Britain which will be beneficial to people on a personal level.

The need for overseas marking has clearly identified an area where unemployment is high but may have also opened up a great opportunity in regards to marking and examinations in the future.

It will be of great interest to witness what future changes might be made to the examination system.