Summary of duties

1. Examiners and Assessors are appointed, on the nomination of the Faculty Board, by the General Board. Examiners who have taken part in an examination shall be present at the final Examiners’ meeting unless they are prevented by grave cause and granted dispensation in advance by the Vice-Chancellor. Assessors set papers or parts of papers and advise Examiners on the performance of candidates in their subjects. Assessors may at the request of the Chair be invited to attend meetings of Examiners for the purpose of consultation and advice, but shall not be entitled to vote.

Setting the paper for Part I

1. Part I papers are set jointly by the Examiner and Assessor, with an agreed division of effort.
2. Examiners and Assessors must consult the Lecturer(s) at an early stage, and certainly before any questions are set, in order to check that their proposed questions are appropriate. The Lecturer(s) should outline the central elements of the course and may suggest specific topics for examining.  The Examiner should check with the Lecturer(s) if any special data books are required.
3. It must not be assumed that the treatment of topics in the syllabus will be the same as in previous years.  Examiners should consult the reports of their immediate predecessors to ascertain how candidates coped with individual questions and what topics and styles of questions were found to be most difficult.
4. As the standard of questions may vary from year to year, it is recommended that Examiners check that their setting and marking have not been either unduly severe or unduly lenient (for target averages see the supplements).  This should ensure that, after following Faculty Board’s guidelines on the proportions of students in the various classes, the marks at class boundaries will roughly coincide with the goals set out in the Marking & Classing Criteria. 
5. It is the responsibility of the Examiners to ensure that the papers are error-free.  The Faculty Board recommends the use of a reading meeting and believes that at least two independent solutions to each question should be prepared. The Board of Examiners should decide whether or not an Examiner will be required to act as an additional ‘second checker’.
6. Lecturers (as checkers) should provide independent cribs for the questions that relate to their part of the course by the specified deadline. These should be returned to the Examiner. The Lecturer should confirm directly to the Chair that he/she has provided a full independent crib.
7. Lecturers should be informed of any subsequent changes to the questions and both Examiners and Lecturers (as checkers) should sign off on the final version of the paper.
8. Examiners, after necessary consultation with Assessors, should provide feedback to the External Examiner on receipt of comments on their paper.

Structuring the questions

1. In Part I papers, the major part of each question should be straightforward, set on familiar material and free from quirks and pitfalls.  Students who have attended the lectures and completed the examples papers should quickly recognise what is required.  A useful format is the three-part question where candidates are asked:

(a)  to provide a statement of principle;

(b) to perform a straightforward application, and;

(c)   to probe more deeply a specific part of the problem.

2. In Part IA (a) and (b) will be sufficient.  In Part IB questions may have all three parts but about two thirds of the credit should be allocated to (a) and (b). 

Solutions and reports

1. The Faculty Board requires every Examiner to provide a written report on the examination to be sent to the Chair at the time the marks are handed in.  A copy of the report is to be placed in the Examiner’s file for the Examiner in the following year.  Where the raw marks have been adjusted by the Examiner, the effect of the adjustment on those marks must be recorded in the report.
2. Examiners are required to provide solutions for their papers.  The Faculty Board recommends to Examiners the practice of including in the solutions comments that may serve as a useful guide to future students.  Specific comments may be added after each individual answer; alternatively the section of the Examiner’s report that deals with individual questions could be reproduced on the last page of the solution.