The (almost really) Complete Works of Lewis Carroll

Dear Mr. Vice-Chancellor

I beg to submit to your consideration the following statistics of the Responsions of the last two years, as it seems to me that the result of the examination of last Term was so anomalous that it ought to be brought before the notice of the University, and some means adopted to prevent its recurrence.

It is not, of course, to be expected that the same standard be accurately maintained in different examinations, or even in the two sections into which the candidates in each examination are divided; and it will be seen that the percentage passed varied, during the years 1875 and 1876, from a minimum value of 54 to a maximum value of 69, the average being 61. But in the recent examination, while the percentage passed in one section reached the maximum value 69, that in the other suddenly sank to 46, far below the minimum value. The anomaly is even more startling if we take the difference between the percentages passed in the two sections in any one examination, which averaged 5½ during the previous two years, but suddenly rose to 23 last Term.

No accidental circumstances can possibly account for so large a discrepancy: and the conclusion seems inevitable that the candidates in the first section were judged by far too high a standard, and that many failed in consequence who would have passed if they had happened to be in the other section.

It is, no doubt, easier to point out an anomaly than to devise a remedy: and I will not venture to do more than suggest that, if the Masters of the Schools were simply to compare the results of each day of viva voce examination, and, if any great difference should be observed between the two sections, to modify their standards accordingly, no such anomaly as this could possibly occur again.

Believe me, dear Mr. Vice-Chancellor, truly yours,