Marking 180 mock papers….can’t cope

[Supermummy88]

Good everyone.

I’ve been teaching for over 10 years and had a career break for 2 years whilst my children were young and not in full time school. I was doing supply a few days a week. However, I’ve now gone back into work full time and taken the role as head of geography. I started in October. I have 3 year 11 classes, 2 year 10 classes, 2 year 9 classes, 1 year 8 and 1 year 7.

The year 11’s had their mocks in december and I marked both paper 1 and paper 2. Both papers were about 20 pages long each…120 papers in total! I really struggled to mark them all. I have 2 young children of my own and I felt they really struggled as I spent no time with them at all.

Year 11 now have mocks again in February and I will have to mark again, however this time I will also have to mark paper 3. I know deep down I won’t be able to cope…especially because of the work load I already have. I’m now thinking that I perhaps should have just stuck to supply teaching. It took me about 40 minutes to mark each paper as there are many extended questions.

What are your thoughts on this? In previous schools I’ve only ever had one year 11 class so the mock marking wasn’t as intense.

Thank you

Teachers should not have to spend half term working. It’s their holiday! I hope you get some help OP.

I think you need to give the other Geog teacher a sample of Paper 1, 2 and 3 to mark. You say he isn't experienced but he never will be if you don't give him opportunities to learn.
Do some moderation with a few papers together in school and then give him the others to do by himself. Like you said, you can't get through them yourself and the other teacher will need to learn the mark schemes at some point in their career- the sooner the better!

Might not even be may. Ours do not stand down. At all. Their timetables get changed weekly until the final exam. I will have year 11 until the end of june, whenever the final full cohort exam is. We basically get 3 weeks of gain time.

I don't see any reason why the other geography teacher can't mark with a mark scheme. It shouldn't all be on you.

@peakygold that's with all their other normal marking/ planning/ assessments to do.

At least we lose ours in May, although that's not much of a help to her now.

For the shorter questions at the start of the paper (if you have any) with clear 'correct' answers you could mark as a class as a good recap starter activity. Would save you a few hours. Then definitely get the other teacher doing half! It's completely unfair to them to not teach or mark GCSE, plus the SLT are limiting his opportunities to gain experience.

I'm so sorry OP. It sounds absolutely shit. No wonder teachers are leaving the profession. Definitely speak to whoever manages you and ask them to help you. Make it someone else's problem too.

I agree with training the other person in the department, he's got to learn at some point. Standardise the first few, then let him mark a question or a number of papers.

I think it's the sitting of three papers which is the problem.

Ours only do English Lit mocks and one full paper per subject, as far as I'm aware. They might do two maths papers. They do a lot of marking in class.

Can you speak to whoever about dropping a paper or two?

I have marked exam papers and had training. It’s easier to open them all up and mark the first page of all, then move on to page 2, etc. Believe me!

Solidarity OP.

At my school we have two full time and one 0.8 geography teachers. Four year 11 classes and I did all the physical and colleague did all the human and third did a class of each. Plus year 7-10 mocks in December. Deadline was Friday and I finished Thursday.

And I marked the paper for AQA int eh summer so was "quick"

It could be tricky to ask then ECT as it's not their class. So would have to take something off them.

No point in doing P3 until after the pre release. Or just do fieldwork. Who has set the exam ours are set by MAT. Can you slim down the paper to one hour?

You could mark them and ask for admin support adding up and inputting data. You could also ask for an extension on the deadline to stagger them a bit.

Yes, that's how I've always done it, but 180 is still a lot!

We also have to input every mark onto a spreadsheet!

Is it the sort of thing that you'll speed up at as you do more?

It seems ridiculous. I'd go back to part time.

I feel your pain. Different subject but o have 144 GCSE students this year. They've just sat mock 1 and will sit mock 2 next week.

Each paper needs marking, tracking and a feedback sheet written. We didn't get the papers with enough time to use AI / Mail Merge to create part of the feedback sheet so it's all handwritten

Usually I can get a class marked while another do their mocks. I had additional things to do this week wrt attendance monitoring so that time was eaten up.

Tracking and feedback is what takes the longest in my subject

I've spent about 6 hours this weekend marking which I'm pissed off about.

You need to speed read and just deep mark parts though - 40 minutes per paper is insane. Find a Facebook support group for your subject and ask for tips to speed up marking.

There's no way exam markers in the summer are spending that long. They'd never make any money 💰

That's not that hard

That is really poor if a school has only one experienced GCSE Geography teacher. If you go off sick it will be horrendous.

@duckpancakes it around 10,000 data entries!

@duckpancakes spreadsheets aren't hard to complete, it's the time involved that's the challenge in addition to all the marking.

That is every question score for every paper. That's hours of a task that isnt allocated anywhere in the working week. And youre right, it is not that hard, so doesnt need the skills of a teacher to do it. It is an admin task.

On the out side though it does calculate to total and % for me

Oh you mean each question?! Per student? That is a lot

It is a lot, I was in a similar situation last year, also Geography so I know the mark schemes aren’t always the easiest.
As others have suggested pile them all together and mark small chunks of each section at once eg. First 4 Qs of Coasts. It really is quicker than doing full papers as you’re not constantly checking answers.
Also, speak to your line manager or SLT link. They might not get cover in but they could be some easy wins to give you some free time eg. Can someone have your form for a week? Or can you avoid after school meetings for the week.

You need to ask for time off timetable and get the other teacher to mark all of the multiple choice / easy questions.
As a PP pointed out, don’t mark paper after paper, mark all of Q1, then all of Q2 and so on, much faster!

Comments about having in-school time to mark, or that it's ridiculous to have to mark mock papers on top of normal timetable, just show how the message about teacher workload really has not got through to people, which is a shame.

When I was a FT teacher, I got two free periods a week to do prep and marking. I then taught 23 hours a week plus obviously daily set-up, duties, form time on top. Two hours was about enough to mark one set of class books. I needed to mark about 10 sets a week to keep up with the requirements - as well as (obviously) planning all my lessons. So of course I had to do all that (and mark mock exams and when we did them, controlled assessments) in my "own" time - in the evenings and at weekends.

The workload was one of the main reasons I left teaching in a school.

Schools have no money to give teachers off-timetable time to mark mocks. At least my subject (MFL) was a bit simpler to mark than English or humanities.

@Supermummy88 I agree with others - can you argue for only two out of the three papers to be sat? I also agree it would be helpful for the other teacher to mark some (helpful for them I mean) - you could always moderate a sample to check, that would still be less time than you marking them all.

Also agree with doing them whenever you can. I used to mark while my DC were doing athletics - I would sit in the stands with a pile of books.