Remarks and general marking from a teacher and examiner's POV

[Shadowboy]

I'm not new to mums net but I am a 'lurker'. I've found reading many threads in here very interesting.

I have been teaching for 10 years at GCSE and A Level only (all exam students) and I am also an examiner for 2 different exam boards and two different subjects. I team lead a paper so examiner experience is pretty good (since 2007)

Remarks- they are done by a more senior examine - TL or PE (principal examiner) depending on subject and exam board approx 30% of exam papers are sent for remarks! Most do not change but approx 10% will change (up or down) in some cases it is because the original paper was harshly or weakly marked. Occasionally it may be a computer clerical error (most exam boards use online marking/scanned scripts)

In many cases where I HAVE awarded more marks its actually due to poor handwriting on the student's part. They are often so tricky to read that the examiner can't decipher what is being written - often then unable to apply to the mark scheme. I have more time and more experience and can often 'figure out' what is being said. I really recommend those students with tiny microscopic handwriting or poor handwriting to type!

Not every single paper is double checked so sometimes standards do slip sadly. I have to sample my team 3 times (total of 30 samples) when they mark 150 papers so some will slip through.

When having a remark the new examiner doesn't know the school/sex/background so have no idea if you've asked for a paper back too or what your teacher thinks. They simply re-apply the markscheme to the work.

As a teacher I am genuinely shocked that schools are recommending remarks without script photocopies first! It's such a risk and say the mark goes up by 2/3 and puts the student from a d to a c it still doesn't show where the student went wrong if they were expected an A grade.

It saves the parent money (or the school if they are paying) but the student learns nothing. Don't forget that UMS marks can be nearly 2 x the raw mark depending on where within the mark scale the student sits. So if it is remarked and goes from a C to a B it's probably gone up ~ 5 raw marks (depending on the original score) which is about 10 UMS marks, so it's just as easy to lose a grade as it is to gain one.

[mummymeister]

titchy, when you go for a job you apply, you get an interview and pretty soon someone phones you to say yes or no. how does this relate to the way Uni places are offered?

you apply from October the year before. you fill in all of your information and you get an offer not based on what you are doing now but on what you did last year at AS level and soon, and even worse, what you did at GCSE. you aren't spoken to directly. no one knows if you are a party animal who flits from one thing to another and wont stay the course or if you are a stable reliable student. No one offers a job without some form of interview.

then you have to choose 2 places based on what? your teachers idea of what your grades might be IF the questions on the exam are what is expected and IF the marking is adequate and IF you get the questions you want and a million other IF's.

then you get your results and either get accepted or rejected and go through the awful process of clearing where you can end up on a course you never wanted at a uni you have never even seen.

the uni entrance process bears absolutely no relation to how people apply for jobs. in fact it bears no relation to how anything else in life is done. even with the 11+ - which isn't wide spread nowadays - you do a mock of the test beforehand so know if applying is worth it as you can see where you are ranked at this stage.

I agree that there has to be a cut off. what I don't accept and never will is that there isn't a better process than the one that we currently have.

it worked in the 70's when I was doing A levels but now with the huge volume of students it just does not.

[mummymeister]

haybott pleased to see that plagiarism is alive and well in our University system re your last remark.

I am not too close to the system and I am not alone, not by a long way, in thinking that the system is no longer fit for purpose. How can it be if staff are having to work 70 hour weeks with no holidays to sort out the places?

The difference would be under a system where you knew your results first is that you would only be applying to places that you knew for certain would accept your A level results. you wouldn't be wasting your time on if, buts and maybes, you would have a certainty.

of course there will be some CCC students who still wanted to apply for Oxbridge but generally this just would not happen. students with their grades would look at the institutions and the courses that matched what they had, right there in their hands. would you look around a new house without knowing the price first? do you try outfits on without looking first at the price tag to see if you can afford it? would you book a holiday then get told the price?

[haybott]

when you go for a job you apply, you get an interview and pretty soon someone phones you to say yes or no.

You're pretty out of date with graduate recruitment. Nowadays vast numbers of candidates apply online for graduate training schemes. They are sifted according to strict criteria (no 2:i often means automatic rejection, rejection based on A level grades is also common). A subset of applications is invited to do further online applications/tests. A small subset of these gets invited to interview. For popular jobs your chance of getting interviewed might be 1% or less.

[haybott]

students with their grades would look at the institutions and the courses that matched what they had

But it is not that simple, is it?

Having the minimum grades needed for a popular course does not mean you will get an offer. Universities would still not know until they received all their applications what grades they would actually accept. Your daughter could apply with AAB to a course listing AAB, only to find that lots of AAA and A star AA applicants had also applied, so she wasn't going to be offered a place.

I don't work 70 hours per week just to sort out applicants places: again you are misunderstanding the nature of universities. Universities are not schools. They do not just exist to teach undergraduates. Universities also research, consult, train post-graduates, advise governments and other policy makers etc etc. All this work has to be done in conjunction with providing top class education for undergraduates.

This is perhaps most easily illustrated in our medical school. Interviews for applicants take place from the Autumn through to the Spring. Research doctors are involved in the interviews. If you try to put all interviews in July and August, taking up most of the research doctors time, then what happens to the child who comes into the university hospital with a rare illness which needs the doctors' expertise? What happens to the patient who needs to be treated with state-of-the-art treatment?

[Headofthehive55]

It would be far more sensible to know your results before application. We know how off predictions can be. A couple of slightly off predictions you are looking at vastly different courses at vastly different institutions. Yes you still might get rejected, but at least you are aiming in the right ballpark. To know is more information than not to know so how can not knowing help?

Yes I understand you still might not be chosen, like those I know if the grades for medicine but no place but I think overall it would be helpful.

There are disappointments in life I agree but I think we could make a better stab at the system. Unis inviting students to like various pages and emailing them introducing the student rep etc I think is just wrong.

Fortunately my second DD took one look at her sister and said I'm not bothering with a levels.

[Headofthehive55]

Equally if you do better than expected there might not be the courses available in adjustment?

So using the example above the AAB student gets the place but the AAA student doesn't...

[titchy]

What is the difference between the system in the 1970s (apply in Autumn with your teacher's predicted grades, get offers or rejects during the spring, sit exams in the summer and go to university in the Autumn) to the sytem now (apply in Autumn with your teacher's predicted grades, get offers or rejects during the spring, sit exams in the summer and go to university in the Autumn).

It's exactly the bloody same!

And you don't get offers based on your GCSE grades. You get the standard offer for that institution for that course. There's no mystery.

[titchy]

It would be far more sensible to know your results before application.

There is absolutely NOTHING stopping applicants doing exactly this...

[InformalRoman]

students with their grades would look at the institutions and the courses that matched what they had

If you look at Scottish universities, which do operate a system of offering to students based on their existing Higher results, they will quote a minimum entry requirement (say AABBB at Higher) and a typical offer (AAAAA).

Just because you meet the minimum entry requirements for a course, you won't necessarily get an offer.

And then if the course requires an A at Maths in Higher, but you got a B, you might then get a conditional offer based on getting a B at Advanced Higher.

So it's not always straightforward.

[InformalRoman]

What is the difference between the system in the 1970s (apply in Autumn with your teacher's predicted grades, get offers or rejects during the spring, sit exams in the summer and go to university in the Autumn) to the sytem now (apply in Autumn with your teacher's predicted grades, get offers or rejects during the spring, sit exams in the summer and go to university in the Autumn).

It's exactly the bloody same!

Well, the difference is that in the 1970s, not many people got an A in their A level. In 1985, for instance, around 9% of A levels were at grade A, now it's 25.8% get an A or A*.

[haybott]

Yes, there has been general "grade inflation" and the number of courses/students has increased significantly. But strict number caps have been removed since 2012 and fees have been frozen, which means that many university courses are willing to be flexible about dropped grades.

[mummymeister]

Higher education is another area where there are significant differences. In the academic year 1970/71, there were 621,000 students in higher education; while in 2007/08 there were 2.5 million students in higher education in the UK

I don't call this exactly the bloody same titchy. it supports my point that there are far more people in the system nowadays and therefore perhaps it is time for a new system as the one we have was set up when there were 621K students not 2.5m students.

A year out once you have your results is not an option for everyone. what do all these 18/19 year olds do? those with money can take a travelling gap year. those without will struggle to get any sort of work that is meaningful because as we all know you don't get a job these days without experience and you cant get experience without a job.

Headofthehive55 There are disappointments in life I agree but I think we could make a better stab at the system. Unis inviting students to like various pages and emailing them introducing the student rep etc I think is just wrong I absolutely could not agree more with you.

lots have kids have been encouraged to change their facebook status to going to XX university only to find that they aren't because they didn't get the grades.

I don't know what the perfect system is. I could give some ideas but others will have better ones I am sure. all I do know is that the current system wasn't set up to deal with 4 times the number of students.

taking medicine as an example lets do something a bit crazy and consider that the students do their exams get their results and then spend a year working within the NHS system. could it work? I don't know but we could consider it. It might mean we get a better quality of applicant less likely to drop out because they know what to expect.

lets change the term dates. why do unis have to follow schools. Anything is possible and a good shakeup of the system is long overdue.

[titchy]

But you're insisting the 'system' is broken just because more people are using it. That doesn't make sense. It works perfectly well. Exactly the same as it did in the 70's. In those golden days most people got offers and happily trotted off to their chosen university. Some didn't and trawled their way through clearing. Same as now. Technology has enabled it to cope perfectly well despite the massive increase in applicants.

lots have kids have been encouraged to change their facebook status to going to XX university only to find that they aren't because they didn't get the grades. You think that's the fault of universities? Bloody hell we're responsible for everything now!

[InformalRoman]

haybott but the trouble is, how do you differentiate between loads of candidates applying with all As and A*s? Back in the 80s, you'd know that a student with AAA was in the top 9% of students - now, they would be in the top 25%.

[OverlyLoverly]

Case 1 Student predicted AAA, offered AAA gets AAA goes to Uni

Case 2 Student predicted AAA offered AAA gets ABB still gets into Uni

Case 3 Student predicted ABB doesn't get an offer has to go to a lower tier Uni, gets AAA but still can't get into to original choice as its full. Can't take a gap year as skint and no guarantee they will get into the course next year anyhow.

^ Does ANYONE really think this is fair or transparent?? This isn't just effecting a few students.

It also disadvantages already disadvantaged applicants the most as their predicted grades are more likely to be incorrect.

[haybott]

AAA would have been more selective than top 9% - in any given subject you had a 9% chance of getting an A, but that doesn't mean you had a 9% chance of getting 3 As. Very few universities asked for AAA back in the 80s.

Similarly now it's a relatively small percentage of students who get straight A stars, or 2 A stars. A level grades are sufficient for most university courses.

Maths is an exception so has its own entrance papers for top universities (STEP); medicine also uses aptitude tests and both Oxford and Cambridge will be using aptitude tests. Other very popular university course may also pick up on Autumn pretests, although there are fears that this will put some students off applying to such courses.

[haybott]

Case 3 Student predicted ABB doesn't get an offer has to go to a lower tier Uni, gets AAA but still can't get into to original choice as its full. Can't take a gap year as skint and no guarantee they will get into the course next year anyhow.

Please quote data to back up your arguments - how many students does this happen to, now that many, many AAA RG courses go into Clearing to pick up extra students?

[BoneyBackJefferson]

I really recommend those students with tiny microscopic handwriting or poor handwriting to type!

Just a note on this, you are not allowed to just type your work, you have to prove that it is your normal way of working. (this is what the exam boards say)

[InformalRoman]

I know that getting 3 As back in the 80s was probably more like being in the top 2 or 3% of students (depending on A level mix), and that unis didn't ask for 3 As.

My point is that surely awarding 25% top grades in A levels makes it hard to distinguish between students?

[haybott]

But one can use A stars (far fewer than 25%) and detailed UMS in modules can also be requested (Cambridge maths and some other courses request this).

[InformalRoman]

But if it was harder to achieve top grades, you wouldn't need to be delving into UMS?

[mummymeister]

to some extent the new 1-9 grading in GCSE's is supposed to overcome the top end loading of grades and by stringing them out a bit more will highlight the top 5% rather than the top 25%. no one really knows yet how this is all going to work. I always get a bit of a "spinal tap" moment when thinking of the new GCSE grades - the bit where his amp goes up to 11 even though it should be 1- 10 but perhaps that is just my age and I digress.

I suppose if the 1 - 9 works with GCSE then they will extend it to A level but it would then make the grade boundaries for some subjects really small.

I think that those working in Unis are really trying to defend the indefensible. I don't know why you are all so adverse to change. when you start charging £9K for something in addition to the amount paid by parents in taxes then I am afraid as an organisation you are going to come under more pressure and more scrutiny precisely because it isn't "free" any more.

I don't know how anyone can take the stance that the current system of guesstimating grades is better than knowledge of what you have and picking a course and uni based on facts and not guesstimates. It might be easier for the organisation. it might be more comfortable to do the same old, same old, same as you have always done. but that doesn't make it right.

my social media feeds have gone bonkers with parents all saying the same as I am. even those whose kids have got into their first choices.

[titchy]

You do realise this is Government policy not our policy? We used to get that amount from the Government till they took it away...

I don't disagree that applying with known grades is a bad idea as it goes. But how would that work? Exams taken in January? What to do with kids between Feb and October then? The Governemnt wants to keep em eduction not boot them out after a year and a bit of sixth form? You'd also have to make university degrees a year longer - so who funds that? And don't say they manage in Scotland - Scottish universities are on their knees. Keep exams in May or June, apply after? Wow you're asking a lot of exam boards! Start university a year later? Again what do these poor unemployable kids do for a year? Who funds the universities for that one year where no one starts a degree?

[titchy]

Most don't delve into UMS? And 25% of kids don't get three As

[InformalRoman]

And 25% of kids don't get three As

I worded that badly. The proportion of A and A* grades at A level was 25%.

As opposed to 9% in 1985.