DELE examiners’ main tasks consist in administering the written and marking the oral tests.
As a member of ALTE and of SICELE, the Cervantes Institute subscribes to those associations’ codes of ethics and good practice, which it makes extensive to DELE examiners. The implications of those principles of good practice for examiners include the following:
- Commitment to furnish the information needed by users to choose the exams best suited to their needs.
- Commitment to furnish exam candidates with information to correctly interpret the results.
- Commitment to warn users against the possible incorrect use of exam results.
- Commitment to yearly training and familiarity with test administration, materials and oral test marking scales and criteria.
- Commitment to equanimity, ensuring tests and their administration are fair for all manner of candidates irrespective of nature or condition (including race, gender, ethnic origin, capacity and similar).
- Where feasible, commitment to adapting test formats or using modified administration arrangements for candidates with different abilities.
- When participating in DELE exams, official examiners must avoid possible conflicts of interest with examinees. Examiners who are or have been a DELE exam candidate teacher are advised against acting as such candidates’ marker during the oral expression test. The same principle is applicable to kinship or affinities stemming from membership in associations, institutions, companies, political parties, trade unions, fraternities, congregations, guilds or corporations. The recommendation to avoid such conflicts of interest as far as possible is likewise included in the regulations governing testing centres. Examiners are bound to notify the authority in charge of any possible conflict of interest. In any event, particularly where possible conflicts of interest are difficult to elude due to prevailing circumstances, testing centre authorities and examiners must adhere to the good practices listed above, especially as regards equanimity.