A-level marking, quick question

[blushpinklily]

Curious about this. When a school sends off exam papers for marking, do they all go to the same examiner(s) or are they sent off to various different examiners?

Out of a group of about 20 for one subject at DCs school, a couple had surprisingly low results out of the group. School has now read the 'surprise low result' papers. Say the marking looks off on them and they've been sent for a review. Apparently this has happened before! However, this doesn't apply to the whole cohort, if that makes sense...

Just wondered how it works?

They go to the exam board in a parcel.

the exam board scans them in.

they then do not physically go anywhere, the marking is done online these days.

in maths, for example, if you are marking you will get sixty million (exaggeration) question 1’s.

so in most subjects it is marked by multiple different people.

It not Edexcel politics is it @blushpinklily?

Each question in an essay type subject is marked by a different examiner but the same examiner should mark all of that question from that centre , I believe.

@Mogandbrew - no, Geography.

Hmm it's really odd. So out of those 20 kids, one examiner marks all the answers to one particular question? Very experienced teacher says a couple of the marks given on essay questions looked really harsh - but only for a few papers! Strange.

But Edexcel??

@Mogandbrew - no, AQA.

One examiner might only mark one or two questions but unless it was a very very small course they won’t do the entire cohort. There are lots of examiners involved. There is moderation and training to try and standardise but will never be perfect.

But Edexcel??

My DD is asking for her Edexcel Psychology papers back. All through the two years she's been getting A star, A or once a B in all assessments/mocks etc. She got a D (one mark off a C) in her exams even though she said they seemed to go fine. Apparently her teacher is a senior examiner for one of the boards so no idea what went wrong.

The A star grade boundary for Edexcel seems very low to me - 59.6% compared to AQA's 77%. I don't understand it to be honest, I must be missing something.

Can I ask if there is an issue with edexcel politics and geography this year? My son is asking for a remark of both.

For some subjects and boards the examiner marks the whole paper, so they could have different examiners.

@onepombearwe got a remark on politics. DD was predicted an A and got a C. Unfortunately, even though she gained a few marks it didn’t change her grade.

She has seen her marks per question and can see which were low. But she’s still struggling to come to terms with it. I think it may be a combination of strict marking and her not answering the questions as well as she was able.

She’s currently thinking she wants to retake, rather than take up the place she got through clearing. It’s at a decent uni but I don’t know that she’s in the right headspace to make the most of it.

What’s your son going to do @onepombear?

Thanks for replying Mogandbrew. Sounds very similar to us. Ds was predicted an A in both and got C in both and he also doesn’t want his clearing place and is looking at re-taking. We are still waiting for the remark results but it has been devastating. Quite a few of his politics class seemed to be down on their grades for that subject.
It’s very much looking like re-takes for us and I suppose we will have to be philosophical about it - my nephew had a year out at this stage and it did him the world of good.
Good luck to your daughter x

It’s horrible for them isn’t it @onepombear? I’m pleased for everyone who’s got what they expected, but it’s hard for those who haven’t.

We’ve said A levels are just a stepping stone, you’ve got a place at a good uni etc. And obviously she might not get the A she wants next year either… but she feels defined by it and nothing we say seems to change that.

It would help if we had more support from her college, but the tutors are on leave so we’re reliant on when they’re able to check messages.

Even if it was marked by the same examiner, in essay subjects there can be inconsistencies.

Having recalled a few scripts of my social science subject - the individual questions have been marked by about 5 different examiners. This seems to have led to wild inconsistencies (think an A star student scoring 9/30 for a question where a C/D student got a perfectly acceptable 19/30 for an objectively worse answer. There were also very varied levels of annotation from absolutely no sign of any marking at all to commentaries). Had a couple of remarks and exam board insist they were 'marked to the standard set'. Humbug.

In my other (smaller, arts) subject , the same examiner marks each question so at least rank order tends to be trustworthy.

Is there anything more we can do @Piggywaspushed? Appreciate dealing with infuriating systems are part of being an adult - but it feels so unfair.

Once an exam board doubles down there is little can be done. Ther is a furtehr layer of appeasl but it's lengthy and tortuous and expensive.

We did do it one year when nota single script had any markings or annotations on it. The board admitted this was 'sub optimal' but stuck by the marks.

The business model is the porblem essentially.

That said, exam boards can and do award extra marks in remarks.

Yes @mogandbrew,my ds seems to feel completely defined by it. He loved Politics and was so good at it. He came out of the exam buzzing because he felt it went so well. I’m so sad for him and everyone who did not get what they needed.
We’re also sad and feel very let down that his school haven’t seemed to care much. There was very little discussion with them on the day - he accepted the clearing place and that was that. It’s in the days since that he’s decided he won’t go. School know but no-one has rung us, it’s all on email between him and them.
What a mess.
Thanks for the marking info @doglover90and @Piggywaspushed . It’s all good to know. I suppose these subjective subjects are so tricky to mark but surely it should be a better system that this given that futures depend on it.

There is an issue (which was highlighted by the algorithms during the Covid era) that the government and exam boards will also say, perfectly happily, that they have confidence that exam results are 'accurate reflections of the work to within ' a grade in either direction'. But, of course, this means that a C instead of a B , for example is seen as an acceptable standard. But it could affect the individual student's future. The same is true of teacher predictions of course where we are told we are 'inaccurate' if we predict an A and a student gets a B. It's acceptable margin of error no matter how much it might floor someone. To be fair, teachers are clear on this when they predict but I'm not sure the message gets through.

The study on this done by a researcher found exam marks to have less variance in STEM (surprise!) and to have the most variance in history. This is also why there are 'tolerance' marks built into NEA moderation and into the checking of examiners' standards.

My DC was predicted an A star in computer science and got a B. This resulted in tears on the day and us recalling the papers (school charge £5 per paper for this). We are waiting for teacher comments before asking for a remark. They are 7 marks of an A, so not super close but I know from GCSE that, if the marking is poor, there can easily be a difference of 7 marks.
In another subject predicted A star and got an A. DC did get a place at chosen uni but they worked so hard and it was their best subject. I think it’s prob work getting remarked.

Anyone else have a much lower grade in computer science or chemistry?

I’m an A level examiner for AQA. The papers are scanned, then each examiner gets a random selection of each question - so I’d do 200 papers overall, but very unlikely I’d get to mark multiple questions from the same student, or even the same centre.