VWO student loses lawsuit over French exam
The Breda vwo student who last week filed summary proceedings against the Board for Tests and Exams (Cvte) to enforce a higher mark for the central written French, has lost her lawsuit.
Image: Rechtspraak.nl
The student failed her final exam, partly because she obtained a 4,0 for the French exam. Her answer to one of the questions was counted incorrect, but the Board for Tests and Exams later reverted to that.
Because all exams had already been checked by then, the SC decided to adjust the so-called standardization term. As a result of this measure, all students actually received the offending question as a gift, regardless of the answer.
Level
The standardization term is intended to compensate for fluctuations in the difficulty of exams over the years. The starting point is that the level of the students remains virtually the same.
The student argued - through her lawyer - that she is now disadvantaged. She would have scored a 4,1 if her answer had been included in the correction rule. She would then have received a pass for Frans on her final list and obtained her diploma.
Judge: “Reaching an unsatisfactory score with such a small difference in points is extremely sour for everyone who happens to this. (…) However, the system of assessment simply means that there will be borderline cases.”
According to the judge it cannot be established with certainty whether the student would indeed have received that 4,1 if her answer had been approved. The judge ruled that the Board of Trustees applied the rules correctly, even though this may be disadvantageous for some students. Bags with such a small deficit is sour, the judge understands, but 'the system of assessment simply means that there will be borderline cases.'
Incidentally, got the exam more criticism to endure.
Neutralize
How exactly did the Board of Directors calculate? In the verdict this is explained: 'After the exam, the CvtE will consider whether the N term should be adjusted. In this case, the BoE wanted to neutralize question 15 by assigning everyone the value of that question. As a result, each student was given question 15 as it were by adding 9 x (1/51) = 0,176, rounded to 0,2 to the mark. This made the exam easier, because in fact, there were still 50 of the 51 questions that needed to be answered correctly. To compensate for this, the N-term has to be lowered to ensure that the same number of students would pass. For that reason, the SC first lowered the N term to N = 0,3, and then added 0,2 to compensation (rounded), so that it came to 0,5. '
