ARITHMETIC SCRIPTS

Dominion, Volume 33, Issue 188, 6 May 1940, Page 5

ARITHMETIC SCRIPTS

Public Controversy Regretted DR. BULLEN’S COMMENT (By Telegraph—Press Association.) ■ AUCKLAND, May 5. Stating that while he agreed with the executive committee of the New Zealand University Senate in regretting the newspaper discussion of the recent trouble in marking scripts in the entrance examination, Dr. K. E. Bullen lias replied as follows: “So far as the general raising of the marks ■ was concerned, it is an indisputable fact that this action was taken primarily on account of the disagreement with the scheme of marking, of the original examiners. The executive committee now states that a reprimand to the examiners, however, arose from alleged errors in carrying out tjiis scheme. “Concerning these alleged errors, it is my opinion on the evidence I have that their extent has been overstated. Some alleged errors have proved in fact not to be errors at all. The reexamining panel drew up a report, the confidential nature of which makes my reply difficult, and in my opinion went too far in making a ease. I believe this was unwittingly done, but this does not.-detract from the serious injustice done to the examiners. “It would be idle to deny that mistakes were made,” Dr. Bullen goes on. “It. is, to my mind, equally idle to suggest that, where 5000 odd scripts, involving some 30,000 separate answers, are examined in three weeks a number of mistakes will not occur. This appears to me to be a second matter to which the Senate has not faced up adequately. It is an interesting exercise in the probability and theory to estimate the chance that one randomly selected set of examiners could be all ‘irresponsible’ and simultaneously another set all faultless. It is very slight.”