Consistency of marking for police applications and police assessments

The issue of consistency has come up a few times in the past few weeks. For any answer that the candidate provides, how can anyone be sure that the answer will be marked in the same way by different assessors? Imagine a candidate is asked a question in relation to when they have experienced inappropriate behaviour. One assessor may listen to the answer, and think what a fantastic example of assertive behaviour the candidate has provided. Conversely, another assessor could be thinking the candidate did not go far enough in their actions, and should have taken the matter further. The police service would argue that these variations are all but eliminated by an intensive training course which explains to assessors how they should evaluate answers. The reality of this is that the actual training course for assessors consists of ten working days, during which they cover the principles of the entire assessment process. It is therefore foolish to suggest that every assessor marks every single answer in the same way. In short, the personality and personal outlook of your assessor will directly affect your mark. People have always liked people that fit in with their own ideas, and always will do.

Of course, to attain consistency is very, very difficult. The police service doesn’t help itself by the fact that many of the people involved in the assessment centre process are not human resource professionals. The background of the assessors is described in a separate section, but their work and life experiences will be completely different. Even if the entire ten day assessor training course was devoted to eliminating these differences, it would still be an impossible task. The reality of the situation is that only a few hours of that ten-day course will be devoted to marking students equally. To try and ensure consistency of marking, individual assessment centres, along with individual assessors are compared in some cases. Realistically however, this will not show up individual assessors making value judgments based on their own perceptions which may be to the candidate’s detriment.

Several years ago for example, there was a noticeable trend in the national sergeant and inspector promotion examinations – it was noted that where male assessors were concerned, attractive female candidates were marked more highly than would be expected. It was also noted that where role actors were supposed to be playing an aggressive part, they too tended to be less aggressive with attractive female candidates than male candidates taking the examination.

The police service of course will deny this. However, I would put forward the argument that such objectivity is not as easily obtainable as the service would suggest. If the service were completely confident that the marking of candidates for examinations and assessment both internally and externally, was as fair as it could be, they would allow candidates to be filmed during their performance. Therefore, if anyone felt they had been discriminated against, the matter could be easily resolved by having an independent panel of assessors view their performance. There would not be a huge cost implication either – all that would be needed is a video camera in each room and each candidate to bring a videotape. The service will not do this. I suggest this is because if a tribunal somewhere started comparing the videotapes of successful candidates in one location with videos from disputed performances by other candidates, huge discrepancies would be shown. In the absence of such videotape evidence, it is very hard for candidates to prove that their performance was in fact to the required standard.
One area in which this lack of consistency shows up is in the application form. The application form has not changed for a number of years, and is the same nationally. I have come across a number of examples where applicants have passed the paper sift once, then failed the assessment. they then reapply, naturally using the same form answers (as it has passed once before), and fail. the police would say that standards may have changed, but if so, in what way? is it not more likely that assessment standards for each assessor are different?

I ws speaking to one candidate recently who this happened to. he has submitted his form to force A, passed the paper sift with all grade B’s, then failed the assessment. he then reapplied six months latter to force B, using EXACTLY the same form. This time he got three C’ and a D, and so was rejected at papersift. he queried this, and for the first tie that i have ever heard off, force B remarked it and he was given an assessment. I know that my old crowd in cheshire would have just said tough, you have failed.

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