SATS marking support

[Welshmonster]

Are there any other KS2 SATS markers on here? I’ve just received the expected pay and for marking 6000 questions I will receive £100 for my troubles before tax. They want me to reach 40% of my 70000 marking target by midnight on Friday.

I’ve spent hours working and barely reached 20% in a week. This is definitely less than minimum wage. I don’t know if I should just quit as it’s insane. They are paid so much money to run the exams but none of it goes to the markers!

is anyone else quitting? Seeing it through?

You need to not be having this discussion on a public forum

Don't they tell you the expected pay when you agree to do it? How many hours have you spent? If less than 20 hours, then by my calculations, you're over minimum wage.

Making everyone keep quiet is part of how they get away with this year after year.

They said 2 hours a day and 4 hours each weekend day. I worked out if I spent 10 seconds per question I would need to work flat out for 16 hours a day for 11 days for basically £500.

That’s terrible op. I presume markers will be doing it quickly which will lead to errors. Do the school get given the papers back so the staff/kids can check them?

Why? It’s shocking? It’s taxpayers money at the end of the day and doesn’t surprise me that they lost the contract as if this is how it works then no wonder people quit. It’s too much on top of report writing and other school stuff at this time of year with in school assessments to mark.

they should be ashamed and held to account.

Because it'll be in the contract not to discuss it.

No one is obliged to do it.

Not sure how it works as it’s online so you don’t have the physical papers and you mark a given set of questions as for Maths there are 3 separate papers, Reading Paper, spelling and a grammar paper. So you mark the same set over and over. Schools can request a remark but I think there may be a charge for it.

Why shouldn’t this info be in the public domain? It’s of interest to me. My child has just sat them and will be placed in the relevant set at secondary school from the results.

Exactly. I hadn’t paid much attention as it is very vague in the contract about payment. Once the period is over I’m going to write to my MP and let them know. Though might wait til after the election! It’s taxpayers money and most of it going to CEO rather than the teachers now busting a gut to get it marked. I think I will stop as the other person said, nobody is obliged to do it so let them mark it themselves.

That is awful OP. Others will (naturally) think the same as you and rush through them resentfully. There must be so many errors which is concerning when the results have longterm consequences.
Make noise about it. Otherwise nothing will change.

Secondary schools generally use a combination of teacher assessments, SATs results and internal CAT scores to set their pupils.

When we sign the contract, it stares not to discuss the process on social media.

*states

We don't set at all, and when we did, we didn't use these results.

I think it’s not worth the time and effort and not spending half term with my family. So apologies if SATS results aren’t back in time but I simply can not mark 40% by Friday and then 60% by Monday.

those people pointing out that I’m not obliged to do it have helped me out. The contract is not clear on the amount of work you will need to do for the money. I could earn more for the time doing something else.

let them sue me for sharing their secrets. I’m sure I could get a decent payout by telling the Daily Fail or another red top what money is being wasted on.

SATS results affect secondary schools Progress 8 results and predicted grades for GCSE. As if they do X in SATS they should be getting X at GCSE.

@Soontobe60 yes some schools retest and ignore SATs - but the school my child is going to uses SATs results. They do not retest in September which seems sensible when they have just spent the whole of year 6 preparing for a week of tests.

I think the whole of year 6 has been a waste of learning time and now the tests may not be marked correctly! This should be in the public domain.

Thanks. Seeing some of the comments from people that are in the hands of the company has made me think I will stop. My family haven’t seen me and it’s half term.

I like to finish my commitments but I have reports to write and planning to do for Monday.

I marked English SATs 17 years ago. Definitely well below minimum wage by the time you take all the admin & other tasks (which I won’t go into for confidentiality’s sake) into account & a total brainfuck into the bargain. And only completed within the timeframe by the skin of my teeth! I never applied to do it again 😱

I'm not in the hands of the company, OP. I just wanted to answer the question about why markers are not really discussion this issue. I actually agree with everything you've said. I'm on the verge of packing it in this morning. I wish I'd never started. It has taken about 12 hours a day, every day since last Friday and I'm still not finished. It will be less than minimum pay.

Those concerned about errors - they have processes in place to try and ensure errors are picked up but it won’t be foolproof.

I marked the papers last year and found it impossible to meet my quota and I wasn’t even teaching at the time. I got my ‘grades’ back as a marker and scored high in quality, etc but scored low on the completion because I didn’t meet any of my targets. It wasn’t possible for me to! I misunderstood and thought I had to mark (for example) 1000 questions a day to meet my quota but no. It was 1000 segments which were 3 questions each. Each one took 20-30 seconds and then loading time in between!

i got my ‘grades’ back as a marker and scored high in quality, etc but scored low on the completion because I didn’t meet any of my targets.

So it is a fair assumption that those who score high on completion receive a low score on quality as the task appears to be impossible to do both? That is highly concerning.

This is why I stopped doing it (A grade marker for many years). They just kept ramping the deadlines tighter and tighter to the point where you couldn’t do it and maintain accuracy or sanity. I quit a couple of years after they switched to online which was when it started to get bonkers with the timescale

Doesn’t your contract say something about not discussing your work on social media?