How does this work for Reviews of Marking?

[tillygod06]

For A-level exams, for essay subjects like English, why exactly is it sometimes the case that examiners mark a person’s essay wrongly so that when it is reviewed the marks change?

I can understand normal human error, but some people say this is more common than with subjects like Maths which have only one right or wrong answer.

But, then if English is a subjective subject, how would an examiner change the mark with a review of marking.

For example, imagine if an English essay was marked as 19/20 by the original examiner and when it was sent for a review of marking the reviewer strongly believed that it actually deserved full marks so 20/20 - so would they change the mark and add one mark to the overall score? Is that how it works?

Or, does the mark only change when it needs to change marking bands? Meaning, if English A-Level essays were marked in five bands - as they are - with Level 1 being 0-3 marks; Level 2 being 4-7 marks; Level 3 being 8-12 marks; Level 4 being 13-16 marks; and Level 5 being 17-20 marks, would the reviewer only change the mark if they felt the need to alter the overall mark band?

So, someone placed into Level 4 with 15 marks who was felt deserving of Level 5 at 17 marks would change and see a 2 mark increase in marks but someone at Level 5 already with 18 marks who the reviewer felt deserved full marks at 20/20 would not be changed as they are still in the same band; or would they be changed and given two more marks?

The aim of the review of marking is to make sure that the mark given was "fair" which is not quite the same as right or wrong.
So the 19/20 vs 20/20 is unlikely unless the marks have been added incorrectly or the examiner does not appear to have marked one paragraph or one page (this often occurs when extra sheets of paper are used when the student doesn't clearly label which question they are answering, for example). The other possibility that isn't the examiners fault is that papers are scanned electronically which does sometimes mean that parts of some answers may not have been scanned correctly.

Once you have started your degree, nobody will care about your GCSEs and A level results. You might include your A level grades, but usually people just say 9 GCSEs including maths & English at grade 8.

The actual marks & grades are only of interest to you.

Agree English is subjective. Exam board will use another marker (not the original one) if you apply for review of marking. Ocassionally, we saw big difference after doing review of marking.

In the essay subject I am a senior examiner for we are only allowed to change marks if they are out of tolerance. So for the 20 mark questions it’s a 2 mark tolerance, so say it was given 16, we can only change if we think it’s 13 or below, or 19 or more if that makes sense. This is because as you said, it’s not an exact science.

But, how’s that fair as if there were eight 20-mark questions and someone was routinely marked 18/20 they would lose 16 marks in total (2 x 8)?

Yet, if the reviewer thought the mark should actually be 20/20, they’d still miss out on 16 marks.

The marks change if the original mark was unreasonable. If person A gave 10 but person B - who is more senior - judges that to be unreasonable, then it would move.

18 rather than 20 is not unreasonable.

15 might well be.

I agree, but those are the rules we have to follow.

Are you putting in for a remark?

It's fairer to look at banding rather than moving all up/down by one or two because if it's come down to being subjective then if you can do remarks it gives two bites of the cherry at getting an examiner that "likes" your answers.

You are assuming that all the 8 questions have been awarded too few marks though. It's possible that some of the questions awarded 18/20 may actually have been 16/20, so it could balance out overall.

Or that they could all have been 16 and then you've got 16 MORE marks than you should have. You can't allow only moves upwards, after all.