​"Is It a Sort of DIY Book?": Confronting Myself As "The Other"

I recently telephoned a Glasgow branch of Waterstones to have a copy of Callum Robinson's book Ingrained : The Making of A Craftsman set aside. The bookseller put me on hold whilst he checked that they had a copy and then, on his return, asked in a slightly uncertain tone; "is it a sort of DIY book?"

At that moment, that split-second of potential before answering I thought of pontificating in a faux Glasgow University accent, “Well, actually, it's a profound meditation on man's relationship with the world through the making of objects”. But I didn't. I just resigned myself and said “Aye, that's what it is”.

When I relate this story I play it for laughs. That at least is what I did at the recent Balfron Book Festival, when I told it to Callum Robinson. After all, it is funny. Or rather, it's, “quite” funny. Or, more accurately, I play it for laughs because it's not funny. Because as I hung up, happy that the book was waiting for me, I was genuinely disconcerted. Why did the exchange feel so unsatisfactory, so ... odd?

In this post, I want to try to work towards understanding that feeling. Because the bookseller’s question isn't one that would be asked of a master chef's memoirs. I can't imagine the same bookseller inquiring about Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential: "is it a sort of cook book”? And that begs the obvious question, what was it about Ingrained that prompted the question?

There are a number of ways to go about this. We could consider the relationship between craft or making and the activity of DIY; we could consider the fact that the exchange took place during a phone call rather than face-to-face. ​It's highly likely that the phone call enabled the bookseller's question. A phone call is a more transactional and less personal form of communication than a face-to-face interaction. The absence of visual cues and social context allows for a more direct, sometimes blunt, way of inquiring. And if I had been present in the store, he might simply have held the book up and asked “is this the right one?”

But what I want to do is consider the first part of the bookseller's question: the “a sort of” part which functions in the question as a discourse marker; a word or phrase that helps to structure and organize what someone is saying. Discourse markers often signal a speaker's attitude or their relationship to the topic, rather than contributing to the literal meaning of the sentence.

The most obvious signal that “a sort of” sends is one of uncertainty; but it serves a few other functions as well, such as hedging, approximation and signalling the unfamiliar. Let's take each of these in turn. 

By saying "is it a sort of DIY book?" the bookseller softens their meaning by creating a polite distance from their own question. He's not making a definitive classification, which avoids the risk of being completely wrong or directly offending me. This is a common way people navigate social interactions when they lack full knowledge.

And “a sort of DIY book” doesn't mean “a DIY book”. The discourse marker here suggests that "DIY book" is the closest category he can think of, but perhaps isn't a perfect fit. It's a way of saying "I don't know the exact term, but taking an educated guess I'm guessing it falls into this general category”. 

On one hand then, the hedging and the taxonomical approximation highlight the bookseller's unfamiliarity with the subject matter. All that is to his credit and he's certainly earned marks for effort.

On the other hand however, the discourse marker highlights the implicit assumption that a book on woodworking must be a practical, instructional manual rather than a personal memoir or a philosophical exploration of man's tool-use in order to make objects and meaning.

This assumption left me wondering why it was hard to believe that a book about a manual craft could be more than just instructions. There is, in “is it a sort of”, an incredulity, an incredulity that someone could write about woodworking, and perhaps an even greater incredulity that that someone would want to read it. Who on earth would want to read “a sort of DIY” book without wanting to know how to make things? And with those ideas, I think we start to get a little closer to what was so disconcerting about the whole exchange.  

​Navigating the Cultural Divide

The bookseller’s question signals unfamiliarity: not just an understandable and excusable unfamiliarity with that particular book, but an unfamiliarity with the very idea of that particular book. The bookseller's language reveals more about his knowledge or worldview—by revealing a broader societal bias against working with your hands. It's subtle, unspoken — and it's more effective than a more direct statement ever could.

The bookseller's language, specifically the use of "a sort of," acts as a linguistic barrier. It's a way of saying, "This doesn't fit into my worldview, and because it's unfamiliar, I have to categorize it in the closest, most pragmatic way I know how”.

But the bookseller's question didn't just signal his unfamiliarity; it transferred it onto me. He was confronted with something outside his realm of reference—a book on woodworking that wasn't a DIY manual. But rather than admit his own lack of knowledge, his question reframed the situation so that the unfamiliarity became mine.

Though he didn't say it, the question signaled a subtle transfer of unfamiliarity. It was as if his lack of understanding of the book was recast as a statement about me and my reading choices, suggesting I was a different 'sort of' Waterstones reader/customer than he was used to.

​It’s a subtle but powerful act of othering. His verbal uncertainty, represented by "a sort of," became a label of uncertainty applied to me. The burden of explaining my reading choice was placed onto me, not on him to understand the book. This is precisely why the interaction felt so disconcerting, despite the lack of any overt malice.

For the bookseller, a book about a manual craft could only be an instructional guide—a DIY book. This I think demonstrates, not just “a” cultural bias where the hands-on, tangible world is seen as separate from the intellectual, narrative world of memoirs and literature, but "the” actual cultural bias that exists in present day Scotland; one enhanced and intensified by the massive rise in school pupils going to university. And though recognition of this situation/problem is gaining traction there remains a number of questions that need to be asked and answered. 

What happens to a society when hands-on trades are not given the same academic or cultural respect as other fields? 

What happens to people, mostly white working-class men, when their society tells them that working with your hands is something you do if you fail at school? 

What is the impact on the mental health of people, hand-workers, who are made to think that their work is of lesser value than “the life of the mind”?

Of course, no lanyarded member of the educational elite is openly going to disparage the trade's or manual work. They don't have to. The whole educational system is geared towards the only real measure of success being entry to university. 

By asking "is it a sort of DIY book?", the bookseller was not just classifying a product; they were inadvertently revealing a deeper cultural assumption. They were signaling that the world of craft is "other" to the world of literature. And when my interest in a book by a woodworker made me a part of that "other" world, it felt like a moment of being seen as an outsider—someone whose reading habits didn't align with the expected norm for someone seeking a book in a place like Waterstones.

Confronting Myself As “The Other”

When I was in Primary 4, I won a book token. I went with my dad to Grant's bookshop on Union Street. I came away with The World of History, and I still have it. I've been buying books ever since. They are part of my identity. A way that I define myself. And, if I'm honest, others. If I see someone reading a book, I'll try to see what they're reading. Young or old; black or white; male or female, I've found readers to always be interested in what other readers are reading. My discomfort was then in part that I was mistaken.

The reason that I found the interaction with the bookseller so disconcerting was a sudden worry that I didn't belong. Waterstones might make money by selling Ingrained, but it might not value Ingrained. And by extension, not value readers of Ingrained, readers like me.

Conclusion

I wouldn't like you to think that I was offended. I wasn't. And there's every possibility that my call was answered by a novice bookseller who tried their best to explain the unfamiliar thing that they held in their hand.

And I accept those possibilities. Even so, and coming back to the point made at the start of this post, it's hard to imagine another type of book that might provoke that “is it a sort of” question. So it seems legitimate to ask what these subtle interactions reveal about how society values certain types of work and knowledge.

In this post, I've argued that the bookseller's discourse marker is symptomatic of the disdain with which hand-workers are held in certain sections of Scottish society. The bookseller doesn't, personally, have to share in that disdain. And that is to an extent, the point. The disdain is so embedded in the public consciousness that it can be manifested without really trying.

No Sire. It's An Educational Revolution

My letter in The Herald on Sunday (07 September).

Dear Madam,

I like a good laugh. But nothing quite prepared me for the coffee-spluttering, full belly chortle prompted by James McEnaney's plea that political parties should be kept out of education.

The Scottish education system is failing. I would say that it was failing right, left and centre but it would be more accurate to say that it's the left and centre that are failing it. “It”, that's such an anonymous way to put it. Failing the pupils, their parents, the teachers, the support-workers, the employers, the people of this country.

Our universities are dependent on foreign fee-paying students with their concomitant effect on urban land use, housing and social coherence. Our schools lack discipline, our teachers lack the respect they should deserve, and far too many of the pupils lack the motivation to even bother turning up. And our colleges struggle on numerous levels, in part, because of the relentless drive to get as many pupils as possible into "free" university places. The list could go on and on and on. There is failure at every level and in every sector. And every single one of these failures can be traced back to, at best, liberal educational policies, and at worst, progressive ones.

As Mr. McEnaney knows full well, arguing that political parties should be kept out of education is itself a deeply political act. It pretends neutrality where there is bias. In fakes disinterest to the advantage of interested activists. It seeks to maintain power for an elitist left-of-centre agenda to the exclusion of the concerns of ordinary people. And it demonstrates the extent of the cosy left-wing consensus in Holyrood which ranges from the Scottish Conservatives to the Greens, the mostly left to the loony left.

It's this leftist consensus, that for all his criticisms, Mr. McEnaney wishes to preserve. Unfortunately for him though, his missive communicates more than it intends. It communicates fear. Fear that for the first time in the devolution period, there is an opportunity to make the Scottish education great again. Fear that the education system will put the priorities of ordinary people first. Fear that the ordinary people who’ve had a belly full of the mendacity, the incompetence, the anybody-but-them-attitude that takes their taxes, treats them as scum and when the find their voice derogates them as white supremacists, the far-right, or whatever the clichéd slur du jour happens to be have an entirely different set of educational priorities from the luxury beliefs of the Scottish educational establishment. 

So I was delighted to read Mr. McEnaney's article. It made my day. It indicates, perhaps even proves, that the progressive/liberal educational establishment with their over-inflated salaries, their mickey-mouse courses and their divisive diversity agendas are worried. They have every right to be. With success, this won't be the start of an educational revolt; it'll be the start of a revolution.

Yours Sincerely, 

Graeme Arnott.

Do Electricians Make Decisions? : The Electrician's Paradoxical Freedom

Introduction: The Puzzle of Vocational Autonomy

The question seems ridiculous. Ridiculous to the point of absurdity. So absurd that it doesn't really deserve a response. And yet.

As I read through the characteristics of each level in the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework, that's precisely the question that came to mind..

Let me explain. Firstly, the background.

For the last dozen or so weeks, much of my time has been spent taking part in the Cambridge Assessment Network's course on the Fundamental Principles of Assessment. As part of our week studying the assessment principle of ‘comparability’, I compared the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) and the Scottish Credit & Qualifications Framework (SCQF).

The EQF has eight levels (Level 1 up to Level 8) in which each level sets out the associated learning outcomes of skill, knowledge, and responsibility and autonomy. Level 2 doesn't have a great deal of skills and knowledge but it does allow the learner a small degree of autonomy.

The SCQF is Scotland's national framework for comparing different qualifications. It compares a different element from the EQF (qualifications v. learning outcomes) but it's still possible to put the two frameworks side-by-side and look at the similarities and the differences. 

The SCQF has twelve levels, rising “up” from 1 to 12. The Scottish Vocational Qualification (SVQ) Modern Apprenticeship for electricians, in Scotland, is a Level 7 qualification. Each level has five characteristics, one of which is titled 'Autonomy, accountability and working with others.' However, when you look at the description for levels 1-7, the word 'autonomy' doesn't explicitly appear. It only explicitly appears at Level 8.

Level 8 is the beginning of what might be termed “Higher Education”; the upper level of college qualifications, such as an HND. The level below a university undergraduate degree. 

And I found that odd. More than odd. I found it baffling. And it immediately raised a number of questions. And admittedly it also raised my hackles.

Some obvious questions 

+ Why is autonomy present in Level 2 of the EQF but not present until Level 8 of the SCQF? 

+ What happens at Level 8 that makes autonomy present in a way that it's not present in Levels 1 - 7?

+ Where does autonomy lie at Level 8 and “above”? Is it in the individual? The course materials? The interaction between the two? The way that the individual uses their learning in the workplace?

Or is it a case that people who “work with their head” are regarded as having autonomy, but people who “work with their hands”, don't? Is the SCQF yet another example of white-collar supremacy?

The Electrician's Paradox: Why True Freedom Is Found in the Rules

We wanna be free, to do what we wanna do, we wanna be free. And we want to get loaded.

When we think about being "autonomous," we can easily imagine it in terms of Primal Scream’s Loaded—total freedom; being able to do whatever we want; unconstrained by external rules or limits. But if that's the definition, (and it is a dictionary’s definition), how can we possibly talk about autonomy for someone in a highly regulated profession, like an electrician? After all, unfettered freedom on an electrical system would lead to chaos rather than competence.

This question highlights a major issue about how the SCQF thinks about skilled trades. The absence of "autonomy" until Level 8, suggests that the framework has an incomplete understanding of what autonomy means for apprentice and qualified electricians.

So, what is a more accurate way to understand autonomy in a skilled trade?

From Following Rules to True Agency

When an apprentice electrician learns a critical safety task like "Safe Isolation" (making sure an electrical system is dead before working on it), they start by simply following instructions such as Select's ‘10 Steps’. Their actions are driven by what they're told to do and maybe even by the fear of making a mistake. This, in the language of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, is a state of "heteronomy"—acting from external instruction rather than internal reason. The journey of an apprenticeship is, or can be considered as the transition from heteronomous actions to autonomous ones. A qualified electrician performs the same task, but they act from a place of deep knowledge and reason. They understand the dangers, their responsibilities, and the necessary safety measures. At this point, in Kantian terms, they are an autonomous agent. But this is only part of the story.

Freedom Within Limits 

An electrician's work is governed by a huge number of standards and regulations, such as the Electricity at Work Regulations 1989 and BS 7671. At first, it might seem like these rules restrict their freedom, forcing us to slavishly follow the rules.

Paradoxically though, these standards are precisely what enable autonomy. BS 7671, for example, isn't just a list of prescriptions; it’s a historical framework of dynamic embedded knowledge, experience, and expertise of the historical electrical trade. It's a living tradition that has been refined and developed over time.

When an electrician works "within the frame," their actions are given meaning and value by these standards. Their job isn’t just to follow the rules; it's to use their sophisticated judgement and deep understanding to navigate this complex set of regulations, client specifications, and the constraints of the physical world. Working within the frame is one way that we produce "good workmanship".

Contrast this with a DIY enthusiast. They might do safe and functional work, but their actions lack the deeper ethical, interpretive engagement of a professional. They are unconfined by the limits of the frame, which means their work is just an outcome, not a meaningful act that validates the worth of the trade's tradition.

As the philosopher Roger Scruton put it, freedom is "a very good horse to ride, but to ride somewhere". The electrician's autonomy is the horse, and the industry’s standards are the "somewhere" it needs to ride to—the safe, responsible, and skilled work that is only possible because of those rules.

Why This Matters

By not explicitly acknowledging autonomy below Level 8, the SCQF misunderstands this "situated autonomy". It fails to recognize the "intellectual demands and professional development" required of a trade qualification. If frameworks like the SCQF are to effectively compare the worth of a trade qualification to a university degree, they must recognize that professional autonomy in skilled trades is not about being unconstrained. Instead, it is a sophisticated form of agency that gives meaning, dignity, and respect to a skilled worker's labor.

My Scrutonian Texts

Deconstructing "Authentic" Assessment

Introduction 

​I was recently asked for my opinion about on-site, situated assessment—the type of assessment its disciples call "authentic".

This post argues that the concept of "authentic" assessment is a philosophical contradiction, a contradiction that becomes clear when we understand that any assessment, simulated or otherwise, can have no reality beyond its own constructed text. I'll explore how this fundamental insight, rooted in the work of Jacques Derrida, reveals a deep flaw in the "authentic" assessment approach to educational evaluation, a flaw that is both philosophical and profoundly human.

​Derrida's famous aphorism, ‘il n'y a pas de hors-texte’, (‘there is nothing outside the text’) is usually applied to questions in literature and philosophy. I argue that educational assessments operate in this way. The moment we bring in a third-party observer into the workplace, the work is immediately reframed. A rubric is set, a time limit is imposed, and a specific task is assigned; in that moment, the real world ceases to be the subject. The subject becomes a constructed simulation, a text to be read and evaluated.

​This dynamic creates a profound identity crisis for the apprentice, whose professional being is destabilized by a new, spectral identity as a “candidate”. Derrida's philosophy, in the reading of Dooley and Kavanagh, is fundamentally concerned with the related questions of memory and identity. It is a philosophical landscape haunted by ghosts and spectres, traces, ashes and mourning. 

The destabilization of the apprentice's identity, this haunting, rooted in Derrida's concept of hauntology, is summoned by the assessor’s gaze. It is a presence that problematizes the apprentice’s being, ensuring that the individual is no longer a single, coherent being but a paradoxical blend of two conflicting identities, the candidate/apprentice. While the assessor's gaze reads a performance, the master electrician's gaze, in complete contrast, is a pedagogical one, and this distinction is where we find the true essence of authenticity—not in a test, but in a tradition.

The Apprentice Electrician as Assessor's "Text"

When assessing a candidate in a simulated environment, say, on their ability to test a lighting system, the specific test results don't matter in the same way that the results matter on-site. What matters in the assessment are the procedures and actions that the candidate performs. The candidate, in the simulated assessment, is not testing the circuit, but is instead performing through their actions that they know how to test the circuit. And in this regard, their actions are as much a simulation of testing as the environment is itself simulated. Their performance is judged on criteria like the settings of the test meter, and whether the test is carried out from the correct part of the circuit. They are, in other words, assessed according to the assessment rubric, and not on whether the installation wiring is up to scratch. The entire scenario is a contrived representation of reality, designed for the sole purpose of evaluation. 

This arrangement ensures that the environment is safe for the candidate to perform and more importantly make mistakes without putting either themselves or the assessor at risk of danger. The assessment can reliably be taken at any centre with any assessor because the simulation is reproducible. The assessment takes place in a controlled environment free from the noise and distractions of a construction site. All the real-world messiness of an electrical installation on a site is cleared away to ensure that the simulated assessment only assesses the candidate's performance ensuring that the assessment has validity. Taking place in a test centre, the assessment is practicable and manageable in terms of bookings and staffing levels. And with all those controls in place, the assessor can concentrate on reading the candidate's actions as if they were reading a text. The candidate's actions are not real work but are instead signs to be interpreted by the assessor. There is no reality to the candidate's performance outside the text of the assessment rubric.

This philosophical error is somewhat paradoxical because the flaw in the “authentic” assessment is that it lacks genuine authenticity. The candidate still has to meet a constructed assessment criteria and it is the assessor’s reading of what is observed, and not the electrician's, that decides how the candidate has performed. It is, in other words, no more "authentic" than the simulation.

Perhaps even more than that, because there is a profound irony here. By its very nature, a situated, so-called "authentic" assessment takes place in the workplace. It is a disruption to the quotidian, the ordinary, the expected. It is a pre-planned, pre-scribed event that interrupts the flow of the workplace and imposes an external frame of scrutiny onto an organic process. To quote Derrida's friend, Emmanuel Lévinas, the workplace suffers 'an abrupt invasion' such that the space the assessor enters ceases to be: the workplace ceases to be a workplace. And, in this respect, there is nothing more inauthentic in the workplace than an "authentic" assessment.

The Haunted Identity of the Apprentice

​Why summon hauntology to discuss authenticity in assessment? By melding haunting with ontology Derrida reconceptualises ghosts as spectres who disturb notions of time and history, blurring distinctions between the present, past, and future. Spectres also problematize being and non-being—they are paradoxically present but absent, unsettling conventional categories of what is real and what is not.

Thus begins Carmen Vallis’ paper which uses Derrida's concept of hauntology to trouble the idea of "authentic" assessment, framing it as a ‘spectre of lost futures’.

The apprentice is a professional-in-training. On-site, they are what they seem to be; their identity set in a practical, day-to-day sense; a shared, recognized identity within the community of practice. But the moment they enter an assessment, their identity as an apprentice is joined by a new, paradoxical identity that of the “candidate”.

This new identity is a kind of spectre; present, but not fully real, one that, as Vallis' paper points out, "problematises being and non-being". The apprentice is still an apprentice, but their professional being is now haunted by this other non-being of candidate, both, as Dooley and Kavanagh put it, ‘belonging and non-belonging, reducible to neither one nor the other’. We can formulate this dyad as the candidate/apprentice. The single word "apprentice" unable to exist without the trace of “candidate”. Both in a state of constant deferral.

In this haunting, the identity of the individual becomes fundamentally non-coherent. The apprentice's being is defined by their work, their relationship with the master electrician, their place within the grading structure. The candidate's identity, however, is inseparable from the assessment's rubric, the assessor's gaze, and the need to perform for a grade. These two identities exist simultaneously but can never truly merge or cohere into a unified whole.

Denial of the Spectre

This is where a more profound philosophical error lies. The advocates of "authentic"assessment seek to deny the existence of this spectral identity altogether. Like Hamlet asking Horatio, "Do you see it?" the answer that advocates of "authentic"assessment want to hear is "no," because that denial allows them to claim that the assessment is a pure, unmediated reflection of the apprentice's true being. 

This haunting occurs irrespective of the simulated or situated nature of the assessment. The assessor's gaze is what summons this spectre. The assessor isn't just observing the candidate/apprentice's actions; they are reading them through the lens of an educational text. This gaze transforms the apprentice's professional identity into an academic one, a paradox that exists only within the contrived space of the assessment. Derrida's theory of hauntology lifts the visor of this ghostly presence to reveal that the "authentic" assessment is no more real than a simulated one.

It is the same with "authentic" assessment advocates who try to solve the problem of non-coherence with a separate, flawed act of coherence: equating the "authentic" with the real. ​A critical point to understand here is that a simulated assessment cannot be said to lack authenticity because it can never possess it. It is not a poor imitation of the real world; it is an entirely separate system with its own logic and its own text. A simulation's purpose is not to replicate reality but to create a controlled environment where a specific, pre-determined set of skills can be observed and evaluated against a specific rubric. The simulation is what it is—a text of a test—and pretending it is anything other than what it is in order to criticize what it cannot have is an act of bad educational faith.

But "authentic" assessment does more than simply deny the presence of the spectre. It seeks to magic its paradoxes away using the power of words. Its very name an incantation, a prayer, a spell. By calling itself "authentic”, the term attempts a deliberate act of concealment. The name itself is a kind of declarative magic, seeking to make real what is only an illusion. It is a linguistic sleight of hand that tries to erase the very spectre it summoned. By naming the assessment as authentic, we are led to believe that its reality is a given and that it has an outside to which it can be compared. But this is a flawed premise. The name is not a description of a quality; it is a declaration of a belief, an attempt to make a phantom cohere through an act of language.

The Electrician's Gaze: A Pedagogical Act

The gaze of “the other” signifies an ethical and existential encounter with a perspective beyond one's own. While the educational assessor's gaze haunts the apprentice by transforming them into a candidate, the master electrician's gaze does different work. 

When I was an apprentice, I remember wanting to see my journeyman smile, acknowledge my work and realize that I respected him and his teaching enough to want to reproduce it. I wanted to see him see that I was learning and doing well. But the smile that I wanted to see wasn't just a mark of approval; it was a confirmation that I was becoming successfully initiated into a community of practice. The apprentice wants to see the journeyman's smile because that acknowledgment is a two-way sign of respect, and a confirmation that they are successfully learning to reproduce the master's craft.

​This gaze is part of a shared text—the tradition of the trade itself. It is not there to judge against a rubric, but to guide, teach, and provide a model. This pedagogical gaze is a gaze of mentorship and acknowledgment. The apprentice is not performing for a grade; they are participating in a conversation that has been going on for generations. This is the un-haunted form of assessment, where the performance is not judged against a pre-written text, but is becoming part of a living one. And whilst all assessment is a form of reading, the master electrician's gaze is one of mentorship and tradition, whilst the educational assessor's is one of cold, bureaucratic scrutiny. What the assessor sees, all that the assessor sees, is the performance of the haunted candidate/apprentice. It is disingenuous to regard these identities, these differences, to be coherent or reconcilable.

Conclusion 

As soon as an assessment rubric is in play the apprentice is haunted by the spectre of being a candidate. This happens irrespective of whether the apprentice is in a college classroom, an assessment centre, or if an assessor assesses them on-site. There is no escaping the fact that all assessments are essentially inauthentic. We cannot escape the reality that any assessment, simulated or otherwise, is a constructed system. The frame is inseparable from the assessor's gaze. When that frame is established, there is no outside of it—and huis clos, no way out. An assessment is not merely an observation; it is a complex, closed system of evaluation. To argue otherwise is at best naive and, at worst, dishonest.

References

Mark Dooley, 'The Surprising Conservatism of Jacques Derrida', The European Conservative, https://europeanconservative.com/articles/essay/the-surprising-conservatism-of-jacques-derrida/, accessed 20th August 2025

Mark Dooley and Liam Kavanagh, (2007) The Philosophy of Derrida, Abingdon , Routledge

Carmen Vallis (2025) ‘Authentic assessment in higher education: the spectre of lost futures’, Teaching in Higher Education, 30:3, 744-751, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2024.2362217

Episode #190 (26 December 2022) - Deconstructing Derrida: A Dialogue with Peter Salmon by Converging Dialogues on Audible. https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/B0BR4CTH5Q?source_code=ORGOR69210072400FU, accessed 21st August 2025

Peter Salmon (2021) An Event, Perhaps: A Biography of Jacques Derrida, London, Verso

Image Credits

Gisela Giardino, Derrida at Jorge Luis Borges´ home in Buenos Aires, 1995, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 12th October 2004, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Jaques_Derrida_(cropped).jpg, CC-A-SA 2.0 Generic, (accessed 25th August 2025)

Hamlet, Horatio, Marcellus and the Ghost (Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 4), print, Robert Thew, after Henry Fuseli, uploaded to Wikimedia Commons on 11th July 2017, This file was donated to Wikimedia Commons as part of a project by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0 1.0, https://share.google/WTpf9JyXlEcycvQQq, accessed 26th August 2024

From Classrooms to Courtrooms: On the Horizon of Trust in Online Assessment

What are the barriers to greater adoption of online and on-screen assessment in high-stake, sessional qualifications in England? 

That's the question Ofqual sought to address in its December 2020 report into the issue. The report separates the most significant barriers into three groups: those associated with IT provision in schools and colleges; implementation challenges; and challenges maintaining fairness.

This post is focused on a feature of the implementation challenges, and in particular, the concern in stakeholder groups essential to the success of any deployment and in broader public opinion.

As part of its attempt to answer the question at the top of this post, Ofqual convened a workshop in January 2020, bringing together a cross section of well-informed stakeholders. These stakeholders represented teachers, school and college leaders, technology providers, awarding organisations, industry bodies, government, and Ofqual. Each of these groups undeniably holds valuable perspectives on the practicalities and challenges of online assessment. All of those representatives were rightly invited, included, listened to, and valued. But there's a glaring omission. An exclusion from the list of the invited participants: parents.

Ofqual

Despite the profound impact online assessment might have on their children's educational practices and their own role in supporting learning, parents or parent group representatives were conspicuously absent from this crucial discussion. This wasn't merely an oversight; it was an exclusionary choice, symptomatic of a deeper, systemic distrust of parents within the wider educational system. Indeed, while other stakeholders were invited to a direct, interactive workshop, Ofqual's approach to understanding parental perception instead relied on a YouGov survey, the 'Perceptions Survey Wave 18'.

This represents a clear two-tier approach to information gathering: on one hand, a networked, collaborative discussion among educational professionals; on the other, a third party's arm's-length survey for parents, effectively avoiding any direct engagement with the wider public. This isn't just about the absence of any specific 'parent group'; rather, it indicates how Ofqual utilized its established network to exert power over the discussion surrounding online assessment, instead of seeking to establish its authority on the issue via genuine dialogue with all affected stakeholders. There's reassurance for the institution in being able to say that they have consulted the "experts," but this very claim undermines its own validity, as it hasn't taken the crucial parental opinion into account. Indeed, there's a profound irony here: the very act of using these selected "experts" to establish the boundaries of the problem and its solutions becomes a technique for presenting the solution as a fait accompli. Once the limits have been set by this inner circle, any further involvement—perhaps, even with parents at a later time—is reduced to merely tweaking an already decided-upon solution. In their attempt to solidify their authority through a narrow consensus, these "experts" unwittingly undermine the broader legitimacy that genuine, inclusive dialogue would have provided. This approach goes further than just an oversight; it presents an ethical concern.

As Roger Scruton articulated in a different context, there is a critical difference between using people as a 'means to an end' and genuinely valuing their expertise to serve 'civil society as the end'. By resorting to an arm's-length survey rather than direct, collaborative engagement, Ofqual risked treating parents as mere data points for a pre-determined outcome, rather than as integral partners whose unique expertise could genuinely shape the most effective and trusted path forward for online assessment. Parents are not simply bystanders of educational policy; they are integral partners, offering unique insights into student well-being, home learning environments, and the real-world impact of pedagogical shifts. To exclude them from a direct discussion on 'barriers to online assessment' suggests a fundamental undervaluation of their perspective, treating them as external actors rather than essential contributors.

To exclude parents from a direct discussion on 'barriers to online assessment' suggests a fundamental undervaluation of their perspective, treating them as external actors rather than essential contributors. There's a further irony here: the workshop appears to have sought a purely technocratic understanding of the challenges in introducing online assessment for high-stakes, sessional qualifications. Yet, in their very pursuit of removing these technocratic barriers, Ofqual inadvertently imposed a significant barrier on participation itself, overlooking the crucial human and trust dimensions of implementation. My own experience, having previously highlighted a similar snub given to parents in the Scottish educational sphere, only reinforces the pervasive nature of this institutional reticence to engage directly with parent groups.

Letters: Our education system is unfit for purpose. Give power to the parents

Moreover, while the Ofqual report does acknowledge 'public concern' on page 16, it notably fails to delve into, or even acknowledge, a critical aspect of this concern: the widespread public distrust in large-scale IT implementations and solutions. This omission is particularly striking given the recent, devastating public experience with such systems, a distrust that has permeated public consciousness with profound implications for how new technologies are perceived and adopted.

Once you realize that parents had been excluded from this crucial workshop – a direct, collaborative forum – and relegated to an impersonal survey, it's hard to shake the feeling that Ofqual was, perhaps unwittingly, setting themselves up for a repeat of history. This approach carries the distinct risk of mirroring the very cycle of denials, avoidance of responsibility, and disregard for the truth that the Horizon scandal so chillingly epitomises.

Horizon

Nowhere has this erosion of trust been more acutely felt than in the ongoing Post Office Horizon IT scandal. The Post Office, as Nick Wallis notes, was historically "the first Government agency" and, until recently, "the main physical interface between the British state and its citizens". It was more than just a business; it was woven into the fabric of British life, carrying with it deeply romantic associations depicted across poetry, literature, film, and television – from the gentle world of Postman Pat to the profound works of Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden. These powerful cultural symbols, Wallis explains, represented core "notions of efficiency, stability, security" and, crucially, "trust" [pp. 18-19].

This deep-seated public trust, cultivated over centuries, was catastrophically shattered by the Horizon IT system. Innocent postmasters, whose lives were intrinsically linked to this symbol of stability and trust, found themselves accused of theft and fraud owing to a faulty computer system.

But the breakdown of trust extended even deeper. As Wallis also reveals, the very foundation of the relationship between the Post Office and its subpostmasters was one of profound "trust" [Nick Wallis, p. 27]. Subpostmasters operated with significant autonomy, managing their branches, handling cash, and acting as pillars of their local communities. This professional relationship, built on mutual reliance and good faith, was systematically betrayed by an institution that prioritised a flawed IT system over the integrity of its own people. The enduring lack of justice for these individuals does nothing to mend this fundamental breach, preventing any true closure and hindering the possibility of rebuilding trust from the ground up.

This multi-faceted collapse of trust within the Post Office saga resonates with the earlier example of parental exclusion in educational policy. In both instances, institutions appear to operate from a position of inherent distrust towards those they are meant to serve or collaborate with – whether it's parents in the educational sphere or dedicated subpostmasters on the frontline. This pattern of systemic distrust, and the devastating consequences it brings, is the unseen thread connecting classrooms to courtrooms, underpinning a dialogic breakdown of trust. Institutions, in their perceived need to exert power or control, demonstrate a distrust of the public they serve. This, in turn, fosters public cynicism and a lack of faith, trapping both parties in mutually fulfilling negative feedback loops that undermine genuine progress and societal cohesion. This repeated failure of leadership to take seriously the concerns of ordinary people undermines trust in our institutions and has brought about a national crisis of institutional distrust.

Conclusion

Whilst the two cases are nowhere near morally equivalent in their scale of direct harm, they share a common, worrying thread. Jordan Peterson, in Beyond Order, exhorts us not to denigrate institutions. We should respect them, preserve them, work within them trusting that they will devote themselves to producing something of value beyond the insurance of their own survival. However, as the Post Office's betrayal of its subpostmasters demonstrates, institutions can all too easily undermine their own worth through insularity, an aloof disregard for ordinary people's voices, and an arrogant assumption that they know best. When institutions like Ofqual use an arm's-length survey for parents while hosting networked, collaborative workshops for others to discuss a question of a large-scale IT proposal, they fundamentally betray the moral authority of the people they serve.

Rebuilding trust, then, isn't just about transparency or process; it's about a fundamental recognition of the people's inherent moral right to be heard, respected, and served justly. Only when institutions truly embody the spirit of genuine dialogue and accountability can trust begin to be restored, moving us away from courtrooms and towards a public sphere where all voices, and not just a clique with the correct opinions, are genuinely valued.

Good for the Goose? Norman Tebbit's Other Test

When I was a boy in the early 1980’s, Norman Tebbit was an almost permanent feature on the news and airwaves. He was, from 1981 to 1987, a member of Margaret Thatcher’s cabinet. He was considered by his critics to be uncompromising, unforgiving, and unyielding; but for those same qualities he was as loved as he was loathed.

If there's one single test associated with Norman Tebbit it is undoubtedly his infamous 1999 cricket test. Coined by him, it arose because of the perceived lack of loyalty shown by South Asian and Caribbean immigrants for the English cricket team. Tebbit controversially suggested that the test should be applied to the children of these immigrants to assess whether they had genuinely integrated into this country.

However, in this post, I'm going to focus on an entirely different test: one that Tebbit failed twice, and one which, I hope, illuminates the assessment principle of reliability and one of the responses to unreliability; generosity.

Upwardly Mobile

I'm going to begin by relating a story that Tebbit tells in his 1989 autobiography Upwardly Mobile. The date is 1953, and Tebbit was flying high as an officer in the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. He was an ambitious young man and he wanted a job as a pilot for the British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC).

At the time, BOAC policy was to train its pilots to be multi-skilled; able to fly the plane and if necessary navigate it as well. Consequently, to become a fully-trained pilot Tebbit had to become a fully-trained navigator. The technical examination for the navigation licence was, he tells us, of a very high academic standard with, all told, twenty weeks of intensive instruction and many hours of swotting at home.

Thankfully, he passed all the components of the exam, all that is except one - the signals practical. That’s not a bad outcome; he’d learned the necessary discipline of self-study, and now all he had to do was focus his attention on the remaining, outstanding component. The requirement of the failed assessment was to send and receive six Morse code words per minute sent by an Aldis lamp or flashed by airfield beacons. Tebbit says that he found the six words per minute requirement difficult enough without the added difficulties of the media. And so, he failed his second attempt.

Not unsurprisingly he was nervous when he went for his second re-sit. He took his seat in a large hall with forty other candidates, and to his great surprise the examiner called him out to the front.

—You know the rules, don’t you?

—Yes Sir.

—If you fail any subject three times, including this practical one, you have to retake the complete examination.

—Yes Sir, I do.

—Then you mustn’t fail, must you?

—No Sir, except, you see Sir, I’m not much good at this.

—I know that, so if you miss anything give me a nod and I’ll repeat it - oh and if all else fails I’ve put you next to an RAF signaller!

Needless to say, he passed. 

Or did he? 

Did he pass, or was he passed?

Unreliability and Generosity

Let’s consider the helpful examiner’s actions. How would you describe what he did? Cheating? Forgiving? A lowering of the academic standard? A helpful hand-up to someone who was obviously capable of flying a plane? Does the answer depend on your political prejudices?

Reliability is defined by the Cambridge Assessment Network as the extent to which the results of an assessment are consistent and replicable. So if an assessment is highly reliable it means that if a student took a different version of the test, or if a different examiner marked the test, they would get exactly the same result. I’ve written more about reliability here.

However, when assessors consider an assessment to be unreliable, generosity is used as a compensatory technique. Did the examiner think it ridiculous that pilots should be fully-trained navigators as well? Or, did the examiner disagree with the two-strike rule? Did he think it overly harsh, an inefficient waste of everyone’s time?

On using Generosity to Combat Unreliability

Tom Benton in his Cambridge Assessment Network paper On using Generosity to Combat Unreliability begins from an acceptance that no assessment system is perfect and that by focusing on the risk for individual students, we might logically decide how much generosity is required. In particular, Benton examines how to adjust assessment grading when reliability decreases, such as during unforeseen events like exam cancellations. (The COVID lockdown carry-on is the obvious context). The article proposes different strategies for setting grade boundaries, including maintaining the original grade distribution, ensuring no student is disadvantaged by being awarded a lower grade than deserved, or maximizing overall classification accuracy. It introduces concepts like "true scores" versus "observed scores" and quantifies the impact of various reliability levels on misclassification rates across different grades. It can all get statistically complex but ultimately, Benton argues that a logical application of "benefit of the doubt" can lead to justifiable changes in grade distributions during periods of lower assessment reliability.

This positive light on generosity has implications for how it is managed. Should it be left to individual examiners, as it seems in the case of the signals practical resit, or should institutional authorities transparently bake generosity into their assessment strategy?

One might easily think that that question would depend upon the social significance of the assessment. Is it easier to tolerate generosity in a low-stakes school assessment but not in assessment taken by an apprentice electrician if the outcome is that he might electrocute himself, or worse, others, as a consequence of being passed rather than passing? It’s probably worth remembering that Tebbit’s examination was to allow him to fly passenger jets. There are no easy or obvious answers.

‘You're certainly relatively competent': assessor bias due to recent experiences

One further interesting area of possibility is to be found in Yeates et al's academic paper, ‘You're certainly relatively competent': assessor bias due to recent experiences. This research paper sheds an interesting light on the psychology of how assessors make poor judgements.

The study's context is medical education, where inter-rater score variability is a known challenge. The researchers conducted an experiment with consultant doctors assessing videos of medical trainees. They split the assessors into two groups: one viewed trainee performances in descending order of proficiency (good, then borderline, then poor), and the other viewed them in ascending order (poor, then borderline, then good).

The study found significant "contrast effects" in assessors' judgement. This means that assessors who had recently seen better performances tended to give lower scores to subsequent candidates, while those who had recently seen poorer performances tended to give higher scores to subsequent candidates. This poor judgement was found to be present involving perceptual judgement and judgements about abstract concepts alike. In essence, differences between the current candidate and recently seen candidates were overemphasized, leading to scores that unduly diverged.

Yeates et al identify a number of key findings that could shed some light on the examiner's actions. The most relevant for this post include:

Normative vs. Criterion-Referenced: The findings suggest that assessors often use "normative" (comparative to others) rather than purely "criterion-referenced" (against a fixed standard) decision-making, and that these internal "norms" are easily influenced by recent experiences.

Lack of Insight: Interestingly, the assessors' confidence in their ratings did not correlate with their susceptibility to this poor judgement, suggesting a lack of insight into how their judgement might be influenced by prior candidates.

Within their “lack of insight” finding, there might be further possibilities such as: 

Lack of Professional Reflection: Assessors, like professionals in many fields, often operate under time constraints and may not be explicitly trained or given the structured opportunities for deep, critical self-reflection on their assessment practices. If they lack the "tools" (e.g., frameworks for poor judgement detection, consistent feedback on their own ratings) or the "time" (owing to workload pressures) to engage in meaningful reflection, then their lack of insight into their own poor judgement is less about malicious intent and more about systemic limitations. In my experience, while reflection is encouraged in principle, the practical support, training, and protected time for truly meaningful self-assessment and debriefing are often scarce. This points to a need for better professional development, support, and a culture that values reflective practice in assessment. If assessors aren't equipped to critically analyze their own judgement and the factors influencing them, unconscious poor judgement are much more likely to persist unchecked. 

Dunning-Kruger Effect: The Dunning-Kruger effect describes how people with low ability at a task often overestimate their competence, precisely due to their lack of metacognitive ability to recognize their own errors. Conversely, highly competent individuals may underestimate their relative competence. In the context of the Yeates et al. paper's finding that assessors lacked insight into their susceptibility to poor judgement despite their confidence, it directly aligns with the Dunning-Kruger phenomenon. If assessors are unconsciously incompetent at detecting or mitigating their own poor judgement, they may confidently believe they are fair and objective even when they are not. This "unrealized or unacknowledged" lack of competence in poor judgement mitigation could be a significant factor.

Ultimately Yeates et al conclude that these cognitive predilections can significantly influence assessors' judgements in ways that are unfair to candidates. There is a question here begging to be asked: unfair to which candidates?

Whilst Benton introduces "generosity" as a logical response to unreliability, the Yeates et al. paper delves into subconscious poor judgement that could contribute to an examiner's subjective decisions. In this new light, the decision of Tebbit's examiner might not have been a deliberate act of "generosity" or "cheating" in the conventional sense, but perhaps an unconscious "contrast effect." If the examiner had just come from assessing candidates who performed significantly worse, Tebbit's "not quite good enough" performance might have seemed "relatively competent" in contrast.

Or, had he, perhaps, seen Tebbit’s scores for the other components? Were Tebbit's scores perhaps higher than his peers and that through experience the examiner recognized Tebbit’s potential? Under those circumstances, did he think that the assessment was unfairly disadvantageous to a perfectly good pilot? We, of course, cannot know. But it is not insignificant that these questions come so easily to mind.

This latter possibility raises a further intriguing question about the assessor decision-making process: could a similar psychological effect, when an assessor views the same candidate's strong performance in two or three components of an assessment, influence their judgement of a weaker performance in an another less well performed component? In other words, is it possible that the examiner, knowing Tebbit's stellar performance in previous sections, was unconsciously swayed to pass him on the final component – a fascinating area we'll delve into in a future post.

 

Unfinished Business

Nearly forty years after his BOAC assessment, Tebbit left front-line politics. In the final chapter of his subsequent 1991 book Unfinished Business, Tebbit set out the direction of what a post-Thatcher Tebbit government would have looked like. I agree with much of it. But something very particular caught my attention. 

Tebbit correctly frames his criticism of the contemporary regretful state of the education system on the socialist reforms of the 1960's. Without lapsing into nostalgic sentimentality, Tebbit praises the one-time tripartite structure of grammar, technical and secondary modern schooling which, in their own ways, served the best interests of their pupils and their country coalescing around achievement and meritocracy. The socialist ethos sought, and for that matter still seeks, to slur the distinction between failure and success. The quicker pupils have to be held back to accommodate the pace of the slowest. What could not be achieved by the many was put beyond the reach of the any. He then continues:

Despite the overwhelming evidence of falling standards a quite contrary picture is displayed by the architects of these disasters who point to statistics of ever-increasing examination success. Closer examination shows that the biggest examination cheats are not students but examiners, teachers and educationalists who simply water down standards to ensure that the appropriate quota of examinees achieve success.

That's how I remember him. Totally unafraid of left-wing intellectualism, he doesn't just pour scorn over their false gods, he pulls them down and tramples on them unmercifully. When will we see his like again. And yet. What are we to conclude about that hand-up given to him in an assessment that he simply wasn't good enough to pass on his own merit? 

One shallow, simplistic solution would be to point a finger at him and cry out “hypocrite”. It would be an answer that tells us nothing. Let us however aim for something a little more complex. In their paper, Yeates et al identify unfairness as one of the consequences of assessor poor judgement. Helping Tebbit to pass let him think that he had passed. It allowed him to forget, consciously or unconsciously, the hand-up. It admonishes Tebbit from the charge of hypocrisy but it doesn't get him off the hook that his critique is made from a position of unrealized privilege.

And finally, if we consider the Assessor's action as a form of lie, we can genuinely see how the lie distorted Tebbit's reality. The very act designed to help him inadvertently harmed his self-perception. It is a tragedy of good intentions. This is then the painful irony of the examiner's actions: that the person treated most unfairly was Tebbit himself.

Reference

‘Reliability’, Assessment 101 Glossary: 101 words and phrases for assessment professionals (nd), The Assessment Network, University of Cambridge, p.10

Benton, T. (2021). On using generosity to combat unreliability. Research Matters: A Cambridge Assessment publication, 31, 22-41

Tebbit, N.

- (1989) Upwardly Mobile, London, Futura Publications 

- (1991) Unfinished Business, London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson 

The Human Element in Moderation: A Journey from Process to Educational Ethic

Personal Prelude 

When I first started working in education, the term for ensuring consistent assessment was 'verification.' It felt precise, almost clinical. “Internal Verification” seemed positively unpleasant. Later, the terminology shifted to 'moderation’, a word that, for me, always carried a hint of something more nuanced, perhaps even something human. Yet, as I delved into the practicalities of the process, particularly in vocational education assessment, I often found myself looking for that 'human element' amidst the checklists and procedures. After all, nobody gets into education simply to fill in paperwork; we want to help and bring on the next generation.

However, despite being more comfortable with the name of the process, a vital question lingered for me: is moderation, however robust, just a process? All too often, moderation—despite its inherent good intentions—can get bogged down in a bureaucratic morass. When this happens, the paperwork and procedures (the means) inadvertently become the end themselves, losing sight of the genuine educational benefits. My argument, however, is that by actively focusing on the broader "educational good" that moderation serves, the very nature of this "box-ticking" process can itself be transformed, becoming an essential vehicle for positive change. It was this search, this personal reflection on the nature of our collective work, that led me to consider how moderation mirrors ideas of reflective practice – not just individual reflection, but a powerful form of group reflection. And from that, to broader philosophical concepts via Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, and the idea that moderation, particularly through its feedback loops, can truly be a route to 'the good' – becoming an educational ethic rather than merely an education management function. This active potential of moderation is crucial; when it degrades into a mere administrative exercise; it fails to grasp its own transformative power.

Introduction

This is not a ‘how to’ post. There are hundreds of those just a Google away. Instead, I want to begin by considering how moderation both diachronically and synchronically can improve standards. In a sense considering what moderation does (or can/could do) before progressing to consider what moderation is and why in order to capture the transformative power of moderation it has to break away from a closed managerial function. 

Moderation: The 3-Way Pivot for Continuous Improvement

Moderation, particularly on an unsuccessful individual candidate's performance, extends far beyond that individual. It serves as a 3-way pivot for continuous improvement, directing feedback and insights across three crucial types of standards: educational, performance; assessment. But beyond this three-way pivot within the standards principle, moderation also critically pivots to the foundational educational principles of validity, reliability and fairness, underscoring its role as a truly remarkable and vitally important procedure.

When moderation highlights common areas of weakness across multiple components of an assessment or specific deficiencies in an apprentice’s performance, this feedback is invaluable for the college. It can inform improvements in teaching methodologies, the curriculum’s emphasis on certain topics, and the overall instructional design. This continuous feedback loop is essential for maintaining and elevating educational standards over time. It is feedback now for improved performance tomorrow. By ensuring that the curriculum remains current, teaching methods are effective, and the emphasis placed on certain features of the course genuinely lead to the required levels of competence.

The direct feedback given to the apprentice about their unsuccessful performance, clearly articulated, becomes a vital part of their preparation for a resit or retake. It pinpoints exactly where they went wrong and what specific skills or knowledge need further development. But the feedback that moderation provides to improve educational standards can also provide a benefit when colleges provide remedial training for candidates prior to the retaking of the assessment. Effective moderation thus establishes what might be called a two-track feedback model which helps improve the performance standards associated with the assessment.

This notion of moderation providing different routes to improvement can also be found in the way that moderation can be utilised to improve assessment standards. Moderation inherently scrutinizes the assessment itself. If the moderation process reveals ambiguities in the assessment task, inconsistencies in marking guides, or issues with the clarity of instructions, this feedback directly improves the quality and fairness of future assessments. This ensures that the assessment accurately measures the intended learning outcomes.

Crucially, the internal verifier’s role in monitoring patterns of mistakes across different apprentices in the same assessment is key to prompting reflective actions regarding the educational and assessment standards. By reviewing these patterns, perhaps on a quarterly basis and reported in pre-arranged, standardized meetings/consortia, where assessors and college leaders can determine if an apprentice’s mistakes are truly individual or, more significantly, evidence of underlying weaknesses in the training provided or the assessment design itself. There will always be a requirement for full-scale reviews of the assessment and the assessment process but moderation provides continuous professional monitoring of the standards. This systematic analysis transforms individual assessment outcomes into valuable data for continuous improvement across the entire vocational programme. To borrow an electrical metaphor, moderation is the equivalent of ongoing maintenance in contrast to periodic inspections. 

Beyond Apprentice Performance: Moderating Assessor Performance

While the initial verification process focuses on the apprentice’s performance, a truly comprehensive moderation strategy must also consider assessor performance. This requires a sensitive and supportive approach, particularly given industrial relations considerations.

The best way to address assessor performance within moderation is through a collaborative decentralisation of the moderation process.

Assessors should regularly engage in peer review of each other’s judgments. This involves assessors critically examining each other’s marking and feedback against agreed standards. This collaborative approach fosters a shared understanding of criteria and helps to identify unconscious biases or inconsistencies in application without being punitive. It also, because no-one is perfect, induces a recognition of professional humility. Indeed, moderation is the antidote to perfectionism.

This, in turn, provides opportunities for the professional development of assessors. When patterns in assessor marking are identified, these become opportunities for targeted training, workshops, or one-on-one support, rather than criticism or disciplinary action. The goal is to enhance their understanding of assessment practices and standards.

Education Scotland emphasizes that "engaging in the moderation process with colleagues will assist you in arriving at valid and reliable decisions on learners' progress" and promotes a "shared understanding of standards and expectations" among practitioners across all sectors. This aligns with the collaborative and transparent principles of moderation.

Moderation meetings, especially those involving the internal verifier, should include calibrated discussions where assessors can collectively review samples of work and discuss their rationale for marks and feedback. This open dialogue helps to align individual interpretations with the shared understanding of standards.

Ultimately, what emerges from these best practices is that moderation is effectively professional group reflection. It's a structured and collaborative process where assessors, internal verifiers, and indeed the entire vocational education institution engage in a cycle of learning and improvement. Much like theories of reflective practice, moderation moves beyond simply "doing" assessment to actively "reflecting on" and "reflecting in" the practice of assessment itself. It allows educators to collectively scrutinize their judgements, challenge assumptions, identify systemic issues in training or assessment design, and continually refine their approach to ensure that every apprentice receives fair, consistent, and high-quality assessment.

Moderation as Ethic

At the beginning of this post, I mentioned how the change from verification to moderation suggested a clear Aristotelian ethic. Aristotle saw "the good" as the aim of all human activity, (our telos) achieved through virtuous practice and the pursuit of excellence. In this light, moderation in vocational education can be seen not merely as an administrative process, but as a route to "the good" in education itself. 

This pursuit of 'the good' finds a tangible parallel in industry standards. BS 7671 states that "good workmanship shall be used", (134.1.1). But it's not just worth considering what the Wiring Regulations state, but where they state it. The positioning in the very first part of the book underscores that "good" is a pervasive standard – a responsibility woven into the very fabric of electrical installation work. It is there because it is only by aiming at the good from the very beginning that we might ultimately hope to arrive there. 

The Regulation’s simple yet powerful directive applies not just to the apprentice or qualified electrician, but extends as a guiding principle to the assessor and the organization that the assessor belongs to. It underscores that pursuit of "the good" is fundamentally that which connects the various components of vocational education. Just as in electrical installation, so too is the pursuit of the good a responsibility woven into the very fabric of training, assessment, and educational professional practice. 

It's almost possible to regard moderation as the single most important process of the whole learning and assessing field. It is the process that ensures that the teaching, learning and assessing operate at their most effective. When moderation is practiced with integrity and a focus on continuous improvement, it cultivates:

 

• A Good Educational Standard: Ensuring that what is taught at college truly equips apprentices with the necessary knowledge and skills.
• A Good Assessment: Guaranteeing that assessments accurately and fairly measure competence, providing a clear pathway for learners to demonstrate their abilities.
• A Good Performance: Supporting apprentices to develop the practical skills and theoretical understanding required to excel in their chosen trade.

These elements all combine to produce "good electricians" who are not only technically proficient but also ethically grounded in their practice. In this sense, moderation, particularly through its two-track feedback mechanisms (direct from the assessor and systemic insights via the college), elevates itself beyond a management function to become a profound educational ethic – a commitment to excellence and the holistic development of competent, skilled, and responsible individuals in the workforce.

Sources & Further Reading:

Aristotle, tr.D. Ross, (2009) Nicomachean Ethics, Oxford, Oxford World's Classics, Oxford University Press 

BS 7671:2018+A2:2022, Requirements for Electrical Installations, IET Wiring Regulations Eighteenth Edition, (2022) IET, London

Image Credit

Aristotle, photographer Nick Thompson, Flickr, Uploaded on March 31, 2012, https://www.flickr.com/photos/pelegrino/6884873348, CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0

The Unlearned Lesson of Untold Lessons

Untold Lessons (Tornare dal bosco literally Returning from the Woods. The US title is Dear Teacher)

by Maddalena Vaglio Tanet:

Hardback: September 12, 2024

Paperback: July 3, 2025

Pushkin Press

In the beginning it was the title. What exactly is an untold lesson? 

Synopsis: The novel opens with a striking premise: a teacher named Silvia disappears into the woods after the shocking news of a favourite student's death. As the mystery of her disappearance takes hold in her small Italian village, the narrative delves into Silvia's past, the speculative theories of the villagers, and the impact of her absence on the community. The story delves into the psyche of a teacher and how a tragic event related to a student impacts her, potentially offering insights into the emotional and psychological toll of the profession and the relationships formed within it.

Whose Untold Lesson?

The book sat for over a week in my bedside pile. The ambiguity of the title didn't just puzzle me, it got under my skin. It was like one of those itches that you just can't stop scratching at. Whose "untold lessons"? Were they intended for the characters to give or receive, or intended solely for the reader? And if the lesson goes untold, can it even be considered a lesson at all? who didn't tell it; who didn't learn it? All these questions, and I hadn't even reached the first page. When I finally started, I prepared myself for the big reveal. I read, and waited. And it didn't happen. Which of course makes absolute sense because it's untold. It was only afterwards that I learned how this lesson actually unfolds. It emerges gradually with nuance and subtlety through the reading experience and long after the final page. Untold Lessons is a profoundly haunting meditation on loss.

Echoes of the Unlearned 

The novel is inspired by the tragically real events that happened more than fifty years ago, originating from the author's own family history and community lore. Vaglio Tanet pieced the story together from scattered allusions, fragments, and then corroborated details by finding old newspaper articles, and although she hasn't publicly named the specific individuals or provided all the granular details of the true event (likely to maintain the privacy of those involved and allow for fictional interpretation), the core elements are derived from this historical incident. 

Vaglio Tanet has emphasized that she wasn't writing a journalistic account, but rather using these real fragments as a foundation to explore the novel's deeper themes of guilt and responsibility, compassion and self-acceptance, and community and the human psyche in the face of tragedy. It is perhaps for this reason that the novel deliberately avoids imagining the crucial moment of the student's death, focusing instead on the aftermath and its ripple effects. 

This basis is not merely historical fact. It has the effect of making the novel's story seem less like a telling than a retelling. It is as if the real event were the first occurrence, the fall, and the literary event, a repetition of that cataclysm. The fact that the author felt compelled to revisit and re-imagine an event from her own past, that perhaps the community (and humanity) has still not fully processed or learned from, lends significant weight to the idea that we are not so much dealing with an untold lesson so much as an unlearned lesson. 

We are often told in the face of tragedy that lessons have, or will be learned. It's often the first platitude out of a politician’s mouth. But if the logic of this interpretation holds true, it's only a matter of time for the lesson to happen again. The persistent lesson in the novel is that the untold all too easily becomes the unlearned. Is it really our collective fate to learn nothing?

Overcoming The Hidden Hurdle: Rising To The Challenge of Test Nerves in High-stakes Vocational Assessments

I was fortunate to be able to catch the young electrician apprentice who fainted in front of me.

Introduction

For many, a high-stakes examination is merely a hurdle. Personally, I thrive on the challenge; the intense preparation, the moment of tension upon opening the examination paper, the possibility of failure. But I recognize that not everyone feels the same as me. For an apprentice, particularly one from a lower socioeconomic background, that final, high-stakes, summative assessment isn't just an assessment; it's a gateway to a meaningful future, a hard-earned step out of precarity, and if getting the apprenticeship in the first place was the start of a journey into an industry with many different facets to it, the other side of that assessment is a giant leap on that journey.

Yet, a hidden hurdle often stands in their way: the debilitating grip of test nerves. This intense nervousness acts as a 'construct irrelevant variance' (CIV), somethinng that affects a candidate's mark other than the skills, knowledge or understanding that the assessment is intended to assess. From an educational perspective this disruptive force undermines the very point, the very foundation of the assessment. From a human perspective, this disruptive force unfairly distorts the candidate's true capabilities and threatens to derail their pursuit of what truly matters.

The "Meaningful Aim"

High stakes vocational assessments are public statements of confidence in the competence of candidates to become electricians. In Scotland, the high-stakes summative vocational assessment for electricians is FICA, the Final Integrated Competence Assessment. (A brief personal note: whilst I'm fortunate to be a FICA Assessor, this piece is written in a purely personal capacity to discuss the general nature of such assessments. It's not my workplace or FICA specifically that's under discussion).

After four or five years of on-the-job training and college work, the apprentice's performance at FICA determines whether they are ready to become a fully qualified electrician. This single assessment carries immense weight, influencing career prospects, earning potential, and overall life trajectory. It is, in essence, a rite of passage marking a significant transition, which, in the language of the 1980’s when I became an electrician, marks the transition from boy to (journey) man.

Jordan Peterson's philosophy often centres on the idea that individuals find meaning and purpose by voluntarily confronting the chaos and challenges inherent in life, taking on responsibility, and striving towards a higher aim. For an apprentice in Scotland pursuing an electrical installation qualification, the journey itself—the years of rigorous training, the mastery of complex technical skills, and the dedication to a demanding craft—is a clear embodiment of "pursuing what matters”. Becoming an electrician, a competent and valued member of society. Someone who solves people's problems and who can make people's lives easier or better, is a concrete meaningful aim; a step out of the chaos (unemployment, financial insecurity) and into a structured responsible role within their trade and society. This pursuit, laden with profound personal, familial and social responsibility can, not unsurprisingly, amplify the emotional response associated with taking any test. More precisely, the fear of failing and falling down the social hierarchy can provoke overwhelming nervousness that interferes with cognitive function and performance.

Confronting Internal Chaos (Nervousness as CIV)

Peterson emphasizes that growth and meaning emerge from confronting the unknown and the chaotic, both externally and internally. Debilitating test nervousness represents a significant internal chaos. It's a psychological "dragon" that, if left unaddressed, can undermine all the diligent preparation and genuine competence an apprentice has accumulated. This nervousness is a CIV because it introduces variability into the test score that is irrelevant to the apprentice's actual electrical knowledge and skill. It's the internal chaos preventing the effective pursuit of the meaningful aim.

In my experience, nervousness as CIV manifests itself in distinct cognitive and physiological ways. Cognitively, this ranges from difficulties focusing on reading guidance material or recalling learned information. It's not because they haven't gained semantic and episodic knowledge but because they simply can't access the learned material because of exam stress. Physiologically, the hands of some candidates sweat and shake so much that it's almost impossible for them to place the probe onto the connection. In order to guide the probe onto the terminal they put themselves in danger by putting their fingers beyond the insulated barriers.

For those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, this pressure can be particularly acute. They may face additional nervousness stemming from:

The Paradox of Resources: Whilst some apprentices from more affluent backgrounds might have access to private tutoring, extensive study materials, the vast majority of apprentices that I encounter don't obviously come from the more affluent end of the income scale. Those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds may lack these advantages, and may not come from a supportive home environment conducive to learning. This can lead to increased anxiety about being under-prepared. However, a supportive home environment conducive to learning can cut both ways, especially if the apprentice is the child of an electrician who happens to also be their employer - the pressure for approval becomes both professional and deeply personal. 

Fear of Failure and Limited Opportunities & The Burden of Responsibility: The consequences of failing a high-stakes vocational exam can be more profound for apprentices with fewer safety nets. The financial implications and the potential impact on their ability to secure stable employment can fuel intense nervousness. This heightened sense of responsibility, while a core tenet of Peterson's philosophy for a well-lived life, can paradoxically amplify test anxiety. The fear of failing not just themselves, but also those who depend on them, can trigger overwhelming nervousness that interferes with cognitive function and performance.

Stereotype Threat: In Scotland's education system, there is often a subtle yet pervasive bias that regards the trades as a fallback for those “not good enough” for university.  The clear signal that Scottish education system sends is that the skills required to get you to university are of more value than the skills that get you an apprenticeship. Richard Reeves, in his book Of Boys and Men argues for a massive investment in male-friendly vocational education and training noting that doing more for boys and men does not require an abandonment of gender equality. The vast majority of young apprentice electricians in Scotland are white, working-class males. So in addition to overcoming the educational stigma of their chosen goal,  they now have the added burden of their race, class, and gender to bear. In the circumstances it seems reasonable to wonder if the people who erected these hurdles are capable of dismantling them. Success in a high stakes vocational assessment might prove the stereotypical clichés wrong. But the terrifying inverse is that failure might just confirm all those negative biases about their abilities. ‘What if “they” were right all along?’ This added pressure can further hinder their performance.

The Impact on Performance and Validity

Consider the practical aspects of a high-stakes summative assessment in electrical installation. An apprentice must possess a deep understanding of wiring circuits, safety regulations, and fault diagnosis—the very 'order' that they have painstakingly learned to impose on complex systems. Yet, under this immense pressures the internal dragon of chaos prevents the effective manifestation of their hard-won order in the world. Research consistently shows a negative correlation between test nerves and performance, meaning highly skilled apprentices can under-perform simply because these nerves prevent them from accurately demonstrating their abilities. This isn't just a problem for the apprentice; it is, at this exact same moment, a fundamental problem for the assessment itself. The assessment is no longer doing what it's designed to do. It's no longer accurately determining if an apprentice is ready to become an electrician. It's at this point that the CIV doesn't just undermine the candidate's performance but also undermines the validity of the assessment, not merely its content. This critical flaw leads some progressive educationalists to argue for the abolition of high-stakes assessment altogether based on a seemingly logical rationale: ‘No assessment = no nerves = no problem’. This simplistic solution overlooks the vital function these assessments serve in ensuring public confidence and professional competence. However, a failure to recognize the significance of this threat to the assessment's validity won't make the simplistic solution go away.

The Call to Order

The more prepared you are, the more confident you'll be.

Jordan Peterson advocates for bringing order to chaos. For the apprentice, this means not only mastering the technical ‘order’ of electrical systems but also imposing order on their internal state. Strategies to mitigate test nervousness—such as thorough preparation, stress management techniques, and familiarization with the assessment format—are, in essence, acts of bringing order to that internal chaos. They are practical steps in the voluntary confrontation of a personal limitation that threatens their meaningful pursuit. Educational institutions clearly have a practical and ethical role to play in mitigating the impact of nervousness as a CIV. What they shouldn't do is overcompensate by teaching to the test. Apprentices have to learn to take responsibility for their learning, their decisions and their actions. Transforming them into test-passing robots serves only one person: you. It flatters your educational vanity, and it compensates for your own feelings of inadequacy by inadequately preparing the apprentice for the challenge. 

Institutions can:

Enhance Preparation and Familiarity. Provide detailed and aligned instructional materials, realistic practice tests, and incorporate low-stakes formative assessments to build-up the apprentice's confidence. They could help too by not providing false information about the assessment. 

Emphasize Mastery and Growth: Focus on demonstrating a mastery of skills and knowledge. By pursuing quality workmanship, and not tolerating a “just get the job done" attitude, apprentices can become more than electricians, they can become good electricians who can subsequently rise into the management sphere with the acknowledged respect of their peers.

Provide Constructive Feedback and Support: Implement infrastructure to provide detailed feedback and opportunities for improvement, thus fostering an inclusive learning environment.

Teach Genuine Coping Strategies: Breathing correctly, for example, helps you control your nervous system function. James Nestor advocates a simple solution of breathing slower, inhaling and exhaling through the nose rather than the mouth. The rhythm matters too. If you inhale, through your nose for three, and back out through your nose for a count of twelve you will feel your heart rate slowly go down. This is not the same thing as medicalizing students.

By implementing these practical strategies, vocational education institutions can create a more supportive and less nervousness-provoking assessment environment. By doing so they will have played their role in removing the CIV that impedes an apprentice's ability to demonstrate their true mastery, and thereby empowered the apprentice to more effectively pursue the meaningful aim of a skilled and stable career.

Conclusion

The pervasive influence of nervousness in high-stakes vocational assessments represents a critical challenge. This intense experience acts as a significant barrier that can unfairly impact their performance and future. By recognizing this nervousness as a profound source of CIV, and implementing practical strategies to mitigate its effects, vocational institutions can ensure fairer and more accurate evaluations, empowering all apprentices to demonstrate their true potential and build successful careers. Addressing this hidden hurdle is not just about improving test scores; it's about creating an environment that serves the best interests of the apprentice, vocational education institutions, and the wider society. In this light, the nervousness experienced by apprentices in high-stakes vocational tests is not merely an inconvenience; it's a direct challenge to their ability to pursue what matters most to them. Overcoming this CIV becomes a crucial part of their journey, a personal act of courage and responsibility that aligns deeply with the principles of finding meaning through confronting life's inevitable difficulties.

Ultimately, addressing nervousness as a CIV in high-stakes vocational assessment is more than just of psychometric interest; it's a commitment to human potential. For all apprentices, and particularly those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, these assessments are crucibles where their dedication to ‘pursuing what matters’ is put to the ultimate test. By proactively mitigating the debilitating effects of nervousness—the debilitating chaos that can obscure their true abilities—vocational education institutions can ensure that assessment outcomes genuinely reflect an individual's hard-earned skills and character, rather than the arbitrary influence of fear. This approach not only strengthens the validity of our qualifications but also empowers every apprentice to step confidently into the meaningful future that they have worked so hard to build.

Sources

Reeves, R.V. (2022) Of Boys and Men: Why The Modern Male Is Struggling, Why It Matters, and What to Do about It, Swift Press 

UMD Special Collections and University Archives, Hurdling Tradition, Flickr, https://flic.kr/p/drUnrh, accessed 25th May 2025, CC BY-NC-ND 2.0, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/deed.en

Mackay, B. & K., (2020) Podcast #638: How Changing Your Breathing Can Change Your Life, The Art of Manliness, Health, Health and Fitness, AoM Team • August 24, 2020 • Last updated: October 1, 2021, 

https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/health/importance-of-proper-breathing/, accessed 21st May 2025.

The quote is from a National Electrotechnical Training video on LinkedIn, (NET video)