Mark(ing) your own homework (where "your" is often substituted with "their", "one's", "its", "his" or "her") is a British expression used in
political discourse, the study of
organisational behaviour and in everyday life. The expression implies that whenever a person or group self-assesses and/or
self regulates their own work they will usually treat it more favorably than if it were assessed by an independent person or group.
Examples
UK
MPs have been criticised for marking their own homework by self-regulating their own expense claims and behaviour.[1][2][3]
UK
Home Secretary and former
prime ministerTheresa May said, in the context of a perceived lack of diversity in
fire and rescue crews, "It is not so much marking your own homework as setting your own exam paper and resolving that you've passed – and it has to change."[5]
According to UK MP
Ann Clwyd, hospitals in the UK are still marking their own homework. Many hospitals do not yet have clear protocols about how complaints are handled and investigated.[6]
The
CQC said, in the context of a proposal to introduce
coregulation of NHS health providers to encourage them to develop their own systems and processes for understanding quality, it will be able to protect against providers marking their own homework by checking self-assessments against its own data.[9]