Maintaining Standards? An Analysis of Assessment Practices in a Business School

This paper looks at assessment practices in one business school. It aims to examine how staff set and maintain standards in the face of a variety of conflicting pressures. Based on a small but representative sample of Aberdeen Business School Staff, there appears to be very broad support across all cognate groups for a University-wide, criteria referenced common grading scheme with anonymous double marking as a reliable and valid method of maintaining standards. External reference points such as QAA subject benchmarks and qualification frameworks were less well known to staff in general and so played only a minor part in informing staff about standards. The evidence also suggests that the standards applied to various pieces of work were not acquired in a systematic way or through training. Whilst evidence suggests that staff did use explicit criteria when assessing students’ work, there were some significant differences in models of marker behaviour between cognate groups. Increased transparency in the assessment of students has made staff more aware of stakeholders in the assessment process. There is however no evidence from this survey that such exposure to stakeholders’ influence has led to risk-averse/defensive marking behaviour.