Outside edge

External examining has never been easy and a new review of the system is unlikely to make it so, writes Susan Bassnett.

When I was a very junior lecturer, external examiners were grey-haired besuited professorial gentlemen whose word was law. The externals raised or lowered marks, made pronouncements and noted with disdain that the students taking a course in creative writing appeared to have been given higher marks than those taking the (compulsory) Anglo-Saxon course. I taught on both and ventured a protest, only to be slapped down straight away. Nobody argued with the externals.

When I became an external myself, years later, the world had changed as had the role. My first exam board lasted over five hours because one member of staff was so unbelievably difficult and my role appeared to be viewed by the department as that of a United Nations peacekeeping delegate brought in to cope with a member of the Taliban. I recall at one stage banging on the table and shouting “I am the external examiner”, something so alien to my feminist take on the world that I still shudder to remember it. The department thanked me afterwards.