AIBU to not pay this exam 'remark' fee?

[nandio]

DD got a C in one of her history A level papers (the one with the biggest weighting). She got A*s in her other 2 papers; this was her working-level prior to the exam.

We requested a review (they don't call it a remark) and the mark was unchanged so we ordered the script. As DD was planning to study for a degree in history she wanted to know where she had gone wrong; she felt that this paper went as well as the other two.

When she saw the returned script the first thing she noticed was that the booklets had been scanned in the wrong order with the third booklet scanned in before the second one.

She wrote to her teachers asking for their feedback. They responded but did not address the booklet order and even went on to discuss her marks incorrectly i.e. not matching the right mark with the right essay.

Has anyone else ever had this happen? Did you pay up??

Oh and I have also marked A level scripts online. Not an essay based subject though.

I agree that someone should be there on results day to help with review enquiries.

Anyone on the leadership scale will be because that's what they are paid for. Of course many teachers do so voluntarily (I do) but to demand someone work unpaid is entitled in the extreme.

Nice drip feed there.

In which case you'll know appropriate senior staff are present for results day and that class teachers are not obliged to be in during the holidays.

You'd also know how reviews of markings work too. It's fairly basic stuff for someone in teaching.

Of course you're a teacher

That's why it's taken you so long to sort this out.

If you really are an A Level teacher you should be fired for your complete incompetence. If it's taken you this long to sort out your daughters A Level then goodness knows how long you'd be sorting a student!

Firstly have others said you are way out of time. I think it very unlikely that even in the unlikely event of the original examiner missing part of the answer that the senior examiner conducting the remark would too.
I don't know what your reason for not paying gor the remark would be-you got the remark you asked gr.

Did you get the original script back or a copy of the marked one.when I ordered one of dds back they stamped 'seen' on any bits of questions I the wrong place on the answer paper

We got back a scanned copy of the script and all pages have been marked with red codes eg KU/S/F/EXP/EV and there are very brief comments.

DD got A overall in her history as other 2 papers scored highly so I doubt that her teachers have been getting it wrong all along.

Sorry I disagree with most and wouldnt let it drop although I would pay the school and if the grade gets changed request a refund which they will be able to do easily. If it makes a difference between her overall grade being an A* rather than an A. People work very hard for them grades and it deserves to be recognised. Make sure you're always dealing directly with the exams officer. Hope she gets the right grade .. fingers crossed!

That script sounds standard to me.

The thing here seems to be that when teacher judgement confirms your child is an A student, you're convinced their judgement is right. But any teacher judgement that isn't saying she's A must be wrong. It seems a little illogical to me.

I'm also not convinced that getting it right on one paper means judgement would be right across the board. Assuming you are a teacher, you'd know like the rest of us that some questions are tricky, or the board can throw curve ball questions, that some questions at question level analysis show an area that a centre needs to work on, that national breakdowns of questions show that students nationally score lower on some questions.

You're more than right to take it up with the exam board, but you'd be wrong to not pay the bill for the service you've already received and you'd have a lot more sense than to start pointing fingers at anyone and everyone before you have had a full review because right now you're blaming teachers, the scanning, the board and anyone else rather than consider your DC might have had a bad day.

@LolaSmiles this is the trickier paper so DD thought it would be an A rather than an A*. She has never had a C grade in any of history papers, nor a B for that matter. She also must have done well in the HAA for Cambridge which had a source comparison component like this paper.

The incorrectly scanned paper may be a red herring. I will write to the exam board as suggested and see what comes of it (most likely nothing although I will ask them to waive the fee).

@nandio

You're clutching at straws. What exactly do you hope to get out of this? Everyone is telling you that scanning the papers in the wrong order will not have any impact on the marking of them as long as your DD clearly indicated which questions were in which booklet.
I've seen at first hand how exam papers are scanned in for several exam boards when working for Pearson. If an exam has 3 papers, for example, each one is scanned in separately, i.e. All P1s, then all P2s etc. All the papers are bar coded. Markers access the scanned papers online to mark the questions they are trained to mark. As others have already said, if the answers bear little or no relation to the question, or there appeared to be half of an answer missing, a marker would query this online and it would be recategorised as a pulled paper, i.e. It would be physically marked.
At what point did the exams officer at your DDs school notice the booklets were scanned in the wrong order? In order to send papers off for review surely they would have downloaded them initially and queried this with the exam board? If you have the papers now, with the corresponding marks, then you should be able to see that all components have received some marks. So the answer that was split between two booklets will have marks in both booklets.
In principle, you should pay the review fee to the school. It would be mightily embarrassing if they took it further and you ended up with the bailiffs knocking on the door!!!

I'd written a long post explaining why you're clutching at straws and how trickier papers can affect marks overall, comparing to averages etc but deleted it because I honestly think if you're a teacher you should know this and you're just clutching at straws.

Scoring low on a paper doesn't make a failure on the school/board. Sometimes students have bad days. Sometimes they misread the question, sometimes they get mental block, sometimes they forget what they were writing and go off on tangents.

They've reviewed the marking and found that the marking is appropriate for the mark scheme.An A/A* paper would leave a change in the review of marking because it would show flaws in the application of the mark scheme.

I still can't believe you're asking them to cancel the fee for a service you've requested and they've provided. It makes me doubt you are a teacher if you seriously can't get your head around the fact that:

1. Person seeks post results service
2. Board provides the service
3. Person needs to pay for the service

CF like you are the reasons most schools ask for payment upfront and then refund in line wit the board refund if the mark is changed. It's not a "pay for it but only if my child and I like the outcome".

I will write to the exam board as suggested and....I will ask them to waive the fee

The school have already paid the fee, at your behest. Pay them the money you owe.

a marker would query this online and it would be recategorised as a pulled paper, i.e. It would be physically marked.

Indeed, surely the codes on OP's copy and the fact it's been appealed make it certain this has occurred. I think it's very likely that a clerk just put the copy together in the wrong order.

It makes me doubt you are a teacher

It does rather strain credibility doesn't it? Especially when she claims to be a marker. How any teacher would have the energy for such a completely pointless argument at this time of year is beyond me.

At no point did anyone notice that the booklets were in the wrong order or if they did that was not conveyed to us.

Obviously we hoped the grade would go up when the paper was reviewed. DD did not have a bad day or go off on the wrong tangent and the questions were not awkward. She did what she has always done. She knew her stuff inside out although it is obviously possible that she didn’t synthesise/evaluate/analyse enough.

She requested the paper (in which she wrote 3 essays) to see where she went wrong and put her mind at ease that she would be able to cope with history at uni.

Rather than put her mind at ease the clerical mess up left her questioning the whole system and without the reassurance of her teachers (who also messed up) she has lost a bit of confidence in her ability.

I am usually the first to defend teachers but on this occasion I too am disappointed. On reflection it may be that the school has not correctly prepared the students for this particular paper as the number of A*s in history was very low, and this is at one of the top selective schools in the country.

This is not about the money but about a system that has worked against my DD achieving her best despite her hard work and dedication.

At no point did anyone notice that the booklets were in the wrong order or if they did that was not conveyed to us.
Maybe because it was so obvious that they didn't think they need to spell it out for you, and it still works not affect the mark, so why would they mention it?
I think you have unreasonably high expectations for the school and teachers. The teachers didn't, as you said, mess it up. They looked at the paper and clearly see nothing wrong with the mark. One mark should also not be a confidence blow, rather a lesson that maybe you're not always an A* student and worse grades will happen in your lifetime. I had students who missed out grades and it uni places, it happens!

Wait she got an A overall? So she has history a level grade A? Whats the fuss about then? There was a kid in my class who got 99 marks out of 100 and him ans his parents demanded it be remarked as he couldnt possibly have gotten less than 100%. It didnt affect him at all. Made no sense. If she has an A then why bothee?

Your daughter got an A at A level and wanted to see the paper to make sure she could cope with a History degree?

The OP knows her child didn't have a bad day because their child is smart.
The system is set up against her child.
The school have failed because they didn't get enough A*.

A student with an A in history and doing a degree is so dented by an A in history that they're questioning their ability.
She didn't get the grade we wanted so the system hasnt worked against her hard word - news flash A Levels aren't awarded by who deserves it the most (one of my GCSE students was a weak student who worked their backside off one year, they absolutely deserved a 9 in terms of hard work, on a good day they could have got a 5. In the end they got a 4. That's because that's what they did on the day).

Give me a break. This sounds very much like "my child is smart and goes to a top school so if they don't get what I think they should it's anyone else's responsibility than my child".

And you claim to be a teacher

Just pay the fee.

I appreciate that its disappointing to have to tell people that your child did not get in to Oxbridge after all but it seems clear that the mark your daughter received was correct. The dropped grade was not because of a scanning error. The paper markers clearly worked out which paper was which.

Your daughter seems to have sensibly moved on. OP, let it go - and pay the school what you owe them

But grade boundaries move and margins tight. Apparently dd performed lower on one paper in several subjects which pulled the others down due to weighting. It may only have been a few marks either way. She decided not to recall one particular script after remark even though it was well below her practice papers as it might just compound her disappointment. Bear in mind for many subjects this was only first or second sitting of the revised A level so even teachers are still adapting.

Tbh I am surprised the exam board or even school will discuss this with you under gdpr, this is your dd's issue not yours were she to choose to pursue it.

Mary
It's an attitude we come across quite frequently in schools, see also:

• I want to complain about my child's coursework mark. You said it would get an A but it got a B (reality - students had been categorically informed that boundaries are set AFTER the marks go to the board and so we don't give grades out, but ball park figure on last year's boundaries would be X)
• my child was on top table in y6 so why are they in set 2? This will dent their confidence and ruin their motivation (reality - we have an able cohort, their child wasn't too 30, and maybe the parents focusing on developing a more positive attitude to learning instead of a silly obsession with appearing top their child wouldn't be upset)
• my child has been moved into a set with thicker children and i want them moving up. Their friends are all in the higher set. (Reality - the school doesn't actually set, they're all mixed ability and no you don't get to cherry pick the children your child is in a class with)
• I got my child to bring their copy of my child's mock paper because their TUTOR has concerns about your marking. The TUTOR says it should be at least a grade higher. Why are you holding my child back? I think you're intimidated by their intelligence. (Reality - tutor, like 70% of tutors, is saying what they think parent wants to hear, hasn't actually taught in schools since the new specifications were brought in so hasn't had the training and isn't an examiner, yet somehow seems to know more than 10-15 specialists who teach the course day in day out).
• Why are you refusing to predict my child an A for UCAS? They are smart enough to get an A. You're holding them back (reality- I've not seen a single piece of independent A grade work, their y12 exams were low B, their class work occasionally gets to the top of a B, and I have zero evidence to justify predicting an A. If they were consistently A/B borderline and working hard then the A would be an accurate prediction)

It's always everyone else who is to blame.

Exam markers would notice if they were marking the wrong question. It's common to mark the same question at a time rather than paper by paper particularly with essays, i.e you go though the whole stack and mark question 1, then start again marking Q2, then q3 and so on.

They wouldn't randomly mark a question on something else entirely.

Has anyone else ever had this happen? Did you pay up??

We had a similar experience with one of DD's papers. We eventually got the paper back (Well after the exam boards deadline) and it is pretty clear that the so-called "review" did not happen as they would have spotted the mistake. We wanted to take it to appeal and initially the schools that they would but then change their minds presumably is too much effort or perhaps because the exam board made them miss the deadline.The school haven't actually asked me for the money so maybe they do feel bad. If they do I will properly pay as I have a younger daughter at the school and I just want to forget about the whole thing as much as possible as I feel so disillusioned and upset for DD who didn't get to her first choice university as result.
No surprise to see that AQA were fined over £1 million recently due to their dodgy "remark" . It's no use to the pupils though as they have to prove that they have suffered a financial loss due to it.