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

This! I'm an English teacher and I've never worked in a school where mock marking wasn't spread out fairly this way. Your colleague is never going to learn how to mark GCSE if he doesn't start.

Yeah didn't realise that. Can't a TA or the receptionist do it?

Watch some useful videos with worksheets in lessons or do silent open book exam questions to practice being perfect and mark all lesson.

This is why people give up teaching. SMT will load on more and more work. If you can cope with it, they will give you even more. This ends when you end it… either by challenging it, or having a breakdown.

It is also a well practiced strategy for managing a person out of a job.

The TAs, now very few, are very occupied supporting students with SEND. The admin staff have no time allocated for teachers' exam input.
There really is no-one else to do it.

Sounds like a bottleneck of work.
I guess the advantage is, you will now have much ks3 marking which must help.

1. They should only do Paper 3. Absolutely no reason to do 1 and 2 again.
2. Next department meeting - focus on GCSE marking and ensure the other teacher can at least mark the shorter questions

I have marked practice SATS papers at school and I agree, it’s horrendous.

as another poster said… take one page at a time… mark every single question 1, then 2… etc. takes loads of time off your marking time because you don’t have to ‘think’ about the answer each time.

If you can, give some of the marking to your team mate. He doesn’t need to be teaching GCSE to mark surely? He could do the shorter pagers with a mark scheme.

Even if he couldn’t do that.. he could input the data into the table?

could you mark some with the class? They all get a different coloured pen, start with the easier questions?
you don’t have to do them all… in fact in the past I have done this with year 6’s and skipped the ones I want to look at properly myself (make sure to make a note of them!), and then go through the rest of the paper with the kids.

It also absolutely won’t hurt to ask for extra time. The worst thing that will happen is you’re told no. But you don’t know if you don’t ask!

good luck!

Why are you setting full papers? Can you not test their knowledge across three topics by selecting questions from each? Or you focus on one or two papers and then pick up their knowledge on the other via homework.

Your marking load has to be factored into the mock process as well as what is best for the students.

You poor woman. That is 80 hours of 'homework'. Virtually impossible.

Sorry I have no advice, but I'm not a teacher. I just feel for you.

I’ve had workload issues before. The head has a duty of care to staff. I’ve went to them, listed everything I had to do, and asked- how do you suggest I manage this?? They were very helpful, surprisingly! Maybe worth a go

I have just read that it is the vice-principle that decides what the students sit. This is absolute madness for lots of reasons! You have to speak to your line manager.

Things like this only change if people say no. This is the entire point of unions, of people standing up for those who have less of a voice etc. In the history of post-industrialised workforce many many times people have stood up and said no - and that is what brings about change.

Teachers are treated appallingly - but if you are actually thinking you would be better off on supply then why not take a stand.

Tell the head you simply won't be doing it - they can either cancel the mocks or they can provide another solution.

Your colleague should mark some, as PP have said, train him/come up with a system.

The super mad thing here is how many GCSE classes you have. Does your colleague teach year 10? You should definitely make sure it's more evenly spread next year. Unless there's a specific reason for this arrangement an NQT should be able to teach GCSE, especially in a small dept.

I have a Media Studies PGCE. There's not really any need for that below KS4, so I hit the ground running with yr 11, yr 10 (and yr 12 & 13) in NQT year. Every class I taught was either an exam class or BTEC. A little scary at first, but so much better than feeling nervous about the time I would eventually have to teach the big boys and girls. Better to do it when you have a slightly lighter timetable and the support of a mentor.

Anyway, I really feel for you. Marking long form answers is really hard, time consuming and tedious. Good luck, we are rooting for you x

PMSL at the reference to a 'Geography TA'.

Is the other teacher a non-specialist? Why don't they have any GCSE classes?

I've said this before on other Staffroom' threads but this is why so many teacher are off sick.
a)the workload is too much and the stress is making you sick
b) you take a couple of days off sick to tackle to workload

Either way the load is too much!

Sadly this is the reality in schools. I teach primary but year 2 SATs involve a huge amount of marking, moderation and data input. Spreadsheets requiring slightly different information and every grade for every subject decided proven with class evidence and discussed with colleagues. All in our own time. I'm sorry OP. My suggestion is just to chip away at it infront of the TV every night. Try and make your lessons light on marking while you get them done to ease your workload.

There is no point teachers moaning/ then quitting etc - people need to stand up to this crap.

These decisions are made by SLT. We would also not be allowed to have pupils mark any questions themselves. The whole process is supposed to be as realistic as possible.

that sounds like a lot of mocks, do you have to do papers 1 and 2 again in the next cycle? Or if you want them to do it for practice, can you just grade the paper 3s and just look through the other two for common misconceptions with each question rather than grade them?

I’m currently in the middle of marking English mocks. My class of 32 did Lang paper 1 and 2, and lit paper 1 and 2, so it’s a heavy workload, but we only have the one set of mocks. I’ve managed to mark a question a night so far, but it will take me nearly another two weeks if I keep doing that so I’m going to have to speed up.

you need to train your other member of staff up too. Surely there are some questions that have fewer marks which he’d be able to take?

You mean they just did them in December?

I used to be a HOD Geography and I had 3 Year 11 groups each year. We had a very big uptake in Geography. I would have the very top set and the lowest and another one as felt it was important for me to see all across the board. I'm afraid this is one of those things plus you have a position of responsibility. Maybe this isn't for you anymore ? Holidays were used by me for marking eg the Easter holidays were for the GCSE fieldworks.

I'm a bit confused by your numbers - are you saying you have 60 across 3 classes? If so you are very lucky. I have no idea though why they are doing two sets of mocks within 3 months. The time could be better spent.

I think this is a really specific and difficult question for members who are not teachers to respond to.

How many hours a week do you spend teaching?

How many hours a week do you spend on lesson prep?

How many hours a week do you spend on other work activities?

How long does each paper take to mark?

No offence, but it sounds like the role as "head of geography" was a bit over sold if there is only one other geography teacher and they have no experience of teaching to GCSE. In that school you are basically the geography department.

I would get pupils to self assess certain questions then you do the longer answers. Or give them the assessment criteria for a longer question and go through it with them then they self assess… by highlighting and annotating where they feel they achieved marks then you check over these

Don’t worry, you’ve got half term coming up soon.