Faculty Chief External Examiner
The Faculty’s Chief External Examiner provides an overview of the operation of the Faculty Assessment Sub-Boards and Assessment Board, to assure the College that the conduct of the Assessment Sub-Boards/Assessment Boards are consistent with the College’s regulations and policies and procedures for the operation of Assessment Sub-Boards and Assessment Boards.
The faculty will determine whether they require an UG and PGT external examiner, or whether the role can be undertaken by the same person. The role is concerned with assessment strategies and their operation, and with the fairness and equitability of the assessment process.
Appointment details:
- Attending Assessment Boards, contributing to the strategic decisions around assessment practice
- Comment on assessment process and marking/classification schemes used within the Faculty, highlighting good practice where appropriate
- Oversight of the effectiveness of the Faculty’s moderation process and comment on such to the Assessment Board
- Contribute to discussions on grade/progression data, available to the Assessment Board, identifying areas of grade inflation for further investigation and comment
- Review the minutes and other relevant documentation relating to the Assessment Sub-Boards reporting into the Assessment Board
- Review Faculty summary of External Examiner reports and summarise key comments and recommendations from the report, commenting to Assessment Boards areas for action to be taken
- Act as External Examiner for any Faculty interdisciplinary module or innovation module where it is deemed a subject specialist is unable to fulfil the role. This would include attending the Assessment Sub-Board meeting.
- Attend an annual meeting with the College’s Chief External Examiner
- Submit an annual report to the Academic Standards Sub-Committee once per academic year. The headings in the report template will be tailored to the specifics of the above duties and will be informed by the discussions and observations at the Assessment Board meetings
- The Faculty Chief External Examiner will usually be appointed for a period of four-years, with no option for extension. Normally the appointment will commence upon the expiry of the appointment of the previous Faculty Chief External Examiner and will coincide with the start of the academic year
- An annual fee of £1000 will be paid for the Faculty Chief External Examiner role upon receipt of a report – timings TBC
The role will not normally include:
- Commenting on assignment tasks or examination papers/questions
- Reviewing or making judgements on course assessment results, progression decisions or award decisions
- Scrutinising the activities of individual External Examiners
- Commenting on the judgements of individual External Examiners
- Meeting with individual students
Eligibility Criteria:
- An appointee should have a minimum of three years’ experience as an External Examiner (either at King’s College London or another UK HEI). Overseas appointees will not be considered
- An appointee can be an External Examiner appointed by King’s College London who is retiring or recently retired
- An appointee should have an appropriate level of academic and/or professional expertise and should be recognised as a figure of authority in their subject area
- An appointee should have subject-based expertise in at least one area of a faculty’s discipline, but does not need to have subject-based expertise in all of the faculty’s disciplines, since the role will not focus on subject specifics, but rather evaluating matters such as: moderation processes, data analysis on progression and award outcomes etc
- If an appointee has recently retired, they must demonstrate how they have retained an ongoing involvement in UK HEI activity, thereby ensuring the currency of their knowledge and skills
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An appointee shall not hold a current External Examiner role with King’s College London, however, current External Examiners who are coming to the end of their tenure are encouraged to apply.
Application process:
- Interested candidates who meet the eligibility criteria can complete and return the application form, with accompanying documents to arqs@kcl.ac.uk
- Applications to be considered by the Faculty Assessment-Board Chair, then submitted for approval (via QSE team) to the Chair of College Assessment and Standards Committee, on behalf of the Vice-President and Vice-Principal Education
- Once the appointment has been approved, confirmation will be sent to the successful candidate and Faculty by the QSE team
Application deadline: 1st May 2022
The application form can be found below.