Preliminary Examination for Theology 2008

Preliminary Examination for Theology 2016

Moderators Report

A. STATISTICS, PERFORMANCE AND PRIZES

57 candidates sat the Preliminary Examination this year, of which 11 gained distinctions.

The full statistics including comparison with previous years are as follows:

Category

Number

Percentage (%)

2015/16

2014/15

2013/14

2015/16

2014/15

2013/14

Distinction

11

21

11

(19.3)

(32.3)

(20.8)

Pass

46

41

40

(80.7)

(63.1)

(75.4)

Fail

-

1

2

-

(1.5)

(3.8)

Incomplete

-

2

-

-

(3.1)

-

In each case (to ensure that like is compared with like) the figures given are for the Hilary Term session. In each of the previous two resits all candidates who had not passed in Hilary passed in Trinity. No resits will be needed this year.

This year 6 of the distinctions (54.5%) were gained by women and 5 (45.5%) by men; 26 candidates were female while 31 were male, so that 23.1% of female candidates and 16.1% of male candidates obtained distinctions. Last year 11 of the distinctions (52.4%) were gained by women and 10 (47.6%) by men; 33 candidates were female while 32 were male, so that 33.3% of female candidates and 31.3% of male candidates obtained distinctions; given the actual numbers involved it would have been virtually impossible arithmetically for these percentages to have been any closer. In 2013/14 8 (72.7%) of the distinctions were gained by women and 3 (27.3%) by men. That year there were 22 male candidates and 31 female candidates, so that 25.8% of women and 13.6% of men obtained distinctions. There thus seems to be some tendency for women to outperform men (in gaining distinctions), but with such a small sample this may not be significant (in the one year where there was a significantly larger number of distinctions this tendency effectively disappeared). The proportion of female candidates has also declined over the three years, but this is probably too short a period to establish the existence of a significant trend.

One candidate (who turned out to be the best overall) elected to take four papers, with the remainder taking three. The highest average mark was 79.50 (from a candidate whose lowest mark was 71, and whose average over her best three papers was actually an incredibly impressive 82.33); the lowest, 56.33. 15 candidates obtained averages of 70 or above, 35 were in the range 60-69.99 with only 6 obtaining an average in the range 50-59.99. Five of the candidates with averages in the 70-79 range did not, however, meet the criteria for a distinction; this reflects candidates who performed very strongly on a language paper but only averagely well on their other papers. Most of those who gained distinctions may have been helped there by very high marks on a language paper, but they all performed strongly on at least one other paper as well, suggesting that the criteria for obtaining a distinction were effective in preventing candidates from obtaining one on the strength of language performance alone. The fact that only two of the distinctions (18.2%) were gained by candidates doing Philosophy and Theology (who made up 43.9% of the cohort), and that one of those also sat (and performed extremely well on) a language paper, may give pause for thought. This language issue will be addressed further in Section B below. In the meantime it may be noted that the average marks obtained on the Hebrew paper (83.83%) and the Greek paper (71.73%) are notably higher than the highest average obtained on any non-language paper (68.06% on the Study of Old Testament Set Texts paper), with most averages being in the mid-sixties (although the aggregate average across the other three language papers, 68.50, was less of an outlier). On the other hand the Introduction to Philosophy paper had the lowest average (58.88%) of all, apart from one language paper taken by only one candidate, so comparative weakness in Philosophy will have been as much a factor as comparative strength in languages in the relative scarcity of Philosophy and Theology distinctions.

The Junior Pusey and Ellerton Prizes in Biblical Hebrew were awarded to Eleanor Wilson of Worcester College and Max Wood of Oriel College. The Gibbs prize for the best overall performance was awarded to Catherine Fleischer of Oriel College.

B. GENERAL COMMENTS ON THE EXAMINATION PROCESS

In the main the process ran very smoothly. The Examination Schools proved most helpful in accommodating timetabling requests, in arranging the delivery and collection of scripts, and, indeed, in all other aspects of the process in which they were involved. The support given by the faculty office, in particular Dr Kathrin Gowers, was once again exemplary and once again greatly eased the load of the Chair of Examiners. The Study of an Old Testament Set Text paper was afflicted with one minor error (see the detailed report in Section C below), but since candidates average performance on that paper was stronger than on any other non-language paper this seems not to have had any significant negative impact. The Arabic paper was also afflicted with a minor glitch involving the Arabic word for God, which was missing a vowel in four occurrences on the question paper. The paper was set correctly, so it is something of a mystery how the error managed to creep in between the setting of the paper and its reproduction, but it seems most likely to have been a fault with the Arabic font employed. It is possible that errors of this sort might be alleviated in future by the use of Unicode rather than special fonts for non-Roman alphabets.

This is the last year in which the Preliminary Examination in Theology will be taken in its current form. The introduction of the new curriculum from Michaelmas 2016 will mean a move from a two-term to a three-term prelims with a completely new set of papers, whose development is already well underway. Next years examiners will therefore chiefly be exercised with the challenges of setting up a completely new examination, rather than worrying about tweaks to an existing one. That said, we offer a number of suggestions that may contribute towards a smooth transition.

First and foremost, since what is envisaged is such a major change, it would seem highly desirable for the people most closely engaged with designing the new curriculum (and hence its methods of assessment) to be actively involved in the examination process, either as examiners or assessors, for the first time this new curriculum is examined in a First Public Examination (assessors will still be in a position to provide guidance on and checking of the design of question papers and a control on the way in which they are marked). The provision of specimen papers and general course descriptions is unlikely to provide sufficient guidance to examiners who may not be entirely conversant with the thinking behind the new course (and hence paper) design and who will have no precedent and at most a few months teaching experience of the new curriculum to guide them.

Second, notwithstanding Section As observations on the limited advantage high scores in language papers (or at least, Greek and Hebrew papers) may have in practice conferred on candidates this year, the fact remains that marks on these papers are regularly higher and often very much higher than those obtained on other papers. There has been some discussion of the possibility of addressing this issue by scaling the marks on these papers, but this would seem to be an inappropriate response to an issue that would better be addressed by redesigning the papers in question, which the move to the new curriculum offers the perfect opportunity to do. It is clear from University guidelines that scaling is intended to be used only to correct an unexpected anomaly in a range of marks for a paper, that is a range of marks that appears out of line with previous years performances or that does not reflect the standard implied by the grade descriptors. The language marks cannot be said to be unexpected in either sense, since the Hebrew and Greek marks are regularly higher than those on other papers, and the existing Prelims grade descriptors, being designed for essay questions, are inapplicable to language papers, so that it is impossible to objectively justify any scaling of marks by reference to them.

It is also clear from the University guidelines that papers should be designed to generate a range of marks that fairly represents candidates ability. As will be seen in the detailed comments on this years Greek and Hebrew papers the examiners for these two papers both feel that there is work to be done in this area, and that, in particular, it is too easy to obtain high marks on these papers, which therefore need to be made more challenging, at least for the more able candidates. This point has in any case been previously observed by Dr Cressida Ryan who has accordingly proposed a revision of the Greek paper for the new curriculum to take this issue into account; this proposal has been accepted in principle by the New Testament teachers group, but the report on this years Greek paper may suggest some further refinements that could be made, and there needs to be a similar process for the Hebrew paper (and possibly the other language papers as well, although this years marks suggest that there may be less of an issue for them).

The absence of grade descriptors appropriate to language papers leads to our third suggestion, namely that the introduction of the new curriculum affords an excellent opportunity for a thoroughgoing revision o