[HPforGrownups] Re: O.W.L. exams

[Pen Robinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 84300


On Friday, Nov 7, 2003, at 08:47 Europe/London, ffimiles wrote:
> Just a quick note - we are allowed to take exam papers out with us
> from exams in the UK - or at least, we were 10 years ago!  We were
> allowed to do this at University level as well and rpevious papers
> were certainly available for revision.
> Ffi
>

Oops - meant to follow up further.

I think it may be unwise to try to translate the OWLs and NEWTs too 
closely into our own experiences.  As far as I can tell, the OWLs match 
fairly closely with my experiences of O-Levels - which would have been 
roughly contemporaneous with JKR's.  However, she may well have decided 
that for dramatic reasons, the system at Hogwarts is a little bit 
different - for example, the attendance of the external examiners.  
When I took practical parts of exams (ie oral tests, dictations etc in 
French and German), these were given by a member of the staff - 
anything else would be impractical.

At Hogwarts it is feasible to have the examiners themselves in 
attendance to conduct the exams because the Wizarding World is small, 
and whether or not Hogwarts is the only school, there cannot be many 
pupils sitting their OWLs at any time.   However, I expect JKR actually 
did this for dramatic and practical reasons - it allows her students to 
display themselves at their very best, with no question of biased 
judging.  [My own theory is that Harry is actually quite a capable 
potion-maker, but it would be difficult for all sorts of reasons to 
allow Snape to award him an 'O', and this avoids the necessity.]

NEWTs, from what we have gleaned so far, are not going to be directly 
comparable to A-Levels, though they have aspects in common.  I think 
they will seem more familiar to English and Welsh readers than to 
Americans, but there's little reason to suppose that JKR has simply 
translated one thing directly into another.

I spose what I'm trying to say is that it doesn't altogether matter 
what real-world practice is!

Cheers,

Pen