Sexism storm as Oxford lets students take exam home ... to help girls
STUDENTS at Oxford University will be allowed to take an exam at home, so more women can get top results. The move was last night denounced as ‘undermining the exam process and the credibility of the university’ – which was accused of being ‘under the tyranny of feminism’.
One of the institution’s history exams will be replaced by a paper that can be done at home.
The move, which begins in the next academic year, comes as statistics show 32 per cent of women achieved a first in history at Oxford in 2015/16, compared with 37 per cent of men.
Nationally, an equal proportion of men and women gained a first in 2015/16 – 24 per cent – while more women achieved a 2:1 (51 per cent versus 47 per cent).
The shake-up is designed to provide ‘greater equity for students in terms of performance by gender’. It will see one of the five timed final-year exams replaced with a ‘ take-out’ exam for second-year students. This will ‘challenge them to research and construct considered historical essays’.
Oxford’s education committee last year suggested three essays over nine days. It said: ‘This course in particular showed one of the largest gender gaps in results between women and men.
‘As women and men perform more equally in submitted work it was proposed that a take- out exam with questions similar to that in a timed exam should be implemented. Student surveys overwhelmingly supported this idea.’
Amanda Foreman, a leading historian writing a world history of women, welcomed the move by Oxford University. But she told The Sunday Times: ‘This is a sticking plaster rather than a real analysis of what is going wrong.’ She claimed degrees need to take a much broader view of what history is and should put more emphasis on female figures such as Boadicea and Florence Nightingale.
While the exam move was supported by staff and students, some of those in meetings about it warned it could raise the risk of plagiarism and reduce academic rigour. One said: ‘We don’t want girls within the faculty to be blamed for “softening” the course.’
Across all subjects, aggregated data for 2014-2016 shows 93.7 per cent of female students achieved a first or 2:1 at Oxford University compared with 90.5 per cent of males.
Chris McGovern, of the Campaign
‘Tyranny of feminism’
for Real Education, labelled the shake-up a ‘retrograde step’ which ‘undermines the credibility of the exam process and ultimately will undermine the credibility of Oxford’.
‘Clearly they’re operating under the tyranny of feminism … They shouldn’t be interfering with the examination system which is tried and tested,’ he said. ‘They’re going into an experi- ment which is wide open to abuse because if the students are going to be able to take the papers home, then who knows who’s doing them?’
He added: ‘[Oxford] seems to be enslaved by gender issues … as they’re enslaved by race awareness issues.
‘They need to get back to basic common sense. If this had been done to favour men there would be an uproar – now it’s been done to favour women it’s OK because women are seen as an oppressed minority. But women tend to dominate academically.’
Alan Smithers, Buckingham University education professor, said: ‘It’s completely wrong to try and favour one gender … An examination under controlled conditions is much fairer.’
An Oxford University spokesman said: ‘This change is part of a broader goal of diversifying the history course … including the need to test a greater range of academic skills. The gender gap was also a consideration.’