Media giant takes over computerised marking of exam papers

Pearson, the media group that owns the Financial Times and Penguin publishers, became a major player in the British education world yesterday with the announcement that it had taken over the country's second-biggest exam board, Edexcel.

Although the £20m deal is only a small acquisition for Pearson, which had a turnover last year of £4.3bn compared with Edexcel's £92m , it heralds a radical overhaul of the exam system. From next January, GCSE, AS, A-level and BTEC exam scripts will be scanned into computers and marked online to make the process faster and more reliable.

Pearson, which runs a big computerised marking business in the United States, said it would invest millions of pounds in bringing its technology to the UK. Edexcel Foundation, a charity, is one of three main exam boards in England.

Under the deal, Pearson will own three-quarters of London Qualifications, a new non-charitable organisation which will run all of Edexcel's existing GCSE, AS Level, A Level and BTEC courses. Edexcel will own the rest and continue to operate as a charity providing grants for vocational education and training.

John Kerr, Edexcel's chief executive who will take the same role at the new company, said the exam system had been under increasing pressure. "We have proved we can cope with this but coping isn't good enough," he said. "If we are to deliver the quality and standards of service that teachers, students and parents deserve, we need investment, skills and technology that we cannot deliver alone."

He said it would not alter the process for schools. But once the board received scripts, they would be computerised and entries would be marked at special marking centres or by examiners working at home with computers fitted with special software and security. Under computerised marking, each entry is scanned electronically so it can then be marked on a computer screen rather than on paper. This enables double marking, where answers are marked simultaneously by two or more examiners, allowing the exam board to improve accuracy without slowing the process.

It also removes the requirement to post millions of exam entries around the country to individual examiners, speeds up the process and reducing the opportunity for scripts to be lost or accidentally destroyed. Pearson processes the results of 40 million school tests every year. Clive Hay-Smith, president of Pearson Assessments and Testing, said the technology would be introduced over five years.