We asked ChatGPT to come up with GCSE exam paper questions – here are the results

Pupils could soon sit exam papers set by AI, in a bid to cut workload and ensure the difficulty level remains consistent from year to year.

The head of England’s exams regulator Ofqual discussed the idea with MPs yesterday, saying the current process is ‘labour intensive’ and ‘difficult’.

Sir Ian Bauckham said it was ‘imperative’ that a human still oversees marking of students’ work, but there were ‘very exciting’ prospects to bring in some levels of automation.

So what would AI exam papers look like? You would hope, that if they pass the oversight process, they’d look the same as those set by a human, only perhaps marginally more consistent.

But to get an idea, we asked ChatGPT to give us some of its ideas.

The first questions given were quite boring, so we asked if exam boards ever used more creative ones, and if it could suggest some if so.

The large language model developed by OpenAI said critical thinking and originality could be assessed with open-ended questions, and suggested the following, to assess for grades A and C respectively…

English Language and Literature
Grade A: Imagine that in 100 years, humans can live on Mars. Write a diary entry from the perspective of a teenager adjusting to life there.

Grade C: Reimagine a key event from Macbeth from the perspective of a minor character, such as a servant or a soldier.

Mathematics
Grade A: A company wants to design a water tank that holds exactly 1,000 liters of water. Propose a design for the tank, explaining the shape and dimensions you chose and why.

Grade C: A fictional currency has coins shaped like pentagons, hexagons, and octagons. Investigate how these shapes can tessellate to form a tiling pattern, and explain which one would be most efficient for minimising gaps.

Biology
Grade A: Design a plant that could survive on a planet with very little sunlight and extreme temperatures. Explain its adaptations.

Grade C: Write a short story about a day in the life of a red blood cell, explaining the journey it takes and the functions it performs.

History
Grade A: If you could interview a key figure from the French Revolution, such as Robespierre or Marie Antoinette, what three questions would you ask them? Why?

Grade C: Imagine you are a journalist in the 1920s. Write a newspaper article discussing the impact of World War I on society, using historical details to make it realistic.

Sociology
Grade A: Create a fictional society where gender roles are reversed compared to traditional norms. How might family structures, education, and employment be different?

Grade C: Write a script for a debate between two sociologists—one supporting Marxist theory and the other supporting Functionalist theory—about the role of education in society.

How did ChatGPT design the questions?

The questions it generated were designed to be broadly relevant across GCSE exam boards in England, including AQA, OCR, Edexcel (Pearson), and WJEC Eduqas, although in reality each have their own minor differences in style.

Given that in 2022, blundering exam chiefs missed out four pages of questions from an A-level exam leaving pupils distraught and teachers horrified they may have taught the wrong syllabus, maybe it’s about time we got the robots involved.

What else did Sir Ian Bauckham say about AI exams?

He told MPs: ‘Decisions made by AI evaluating a piece of work that a student has produced for a high-stakes assessment are less transparent and therefore less open to challenge than they might be if marked by a human.

‘You can’t easily ask a computer to explain to you why it’s made a judgment about the marking of your work in a way that you can ask an examiner to explain that.’

He said that the vast majority of GCSE and A-level assessments involve ‘some degree of extended writing’ which would need a human to look at.

But he acknowledged that there could be some ‘very simple, selective response items’, such as multiple choice questions, which could be marked safely by a machine but with a human checking the process.

On Tuesday, Ofsted also announced that it has been asked to research the use of AI in education by the government.

The review will investigate how schools and colleges in England are already using AI, and how leaders are managing risks associated with AI use.

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