Exam marking

[WilderRose]

Recently changed name but regular on this board.
I know I am not alone with concerns about A level exam marking this year. My ds got what he needed for Bath so did not bother with remark for an a level with a surprise slip in grade. However, some remarks flagged up here have huge disparities. Is this a particular poor marking year? Is it across the examination boards and subjects? Does it need formal investigation and change in marking training/ policy/ markers etc?
Our children should be able to rely on a fair system.

Totally agree

It's been quite shocking to see the amount of marks some students have been awarded following a review of marking. It is a review of marking too and not a remark, so they are looking for errors in the way the mark scheme has been applied by the marker for example.

If they have incorrectly interpretted and applied the mark scheme for one student, then it is highly likely they have made the same error on every paper they have marked. I believe there is a case for changing the process to ensure that if there is strong evidence that the mark scheme has been incorrectly applied (say a change of 5 marks for arguements sake) then all papers graded by that particular exam marker should automatically be reviewed. If it happens as rarely as they suggest then it won't be a big job will it!

It is generally only students who have missed the grade by 1 or 2 marks that request a remark due to the risk of marks going down. There is also cost to families which can be a barrier. I have no doubt that there are many more students with incorrect grades who felt the risk or cost of a review was too great.

I know that someone has to be on the grade boundary and I'm not talking about everyone getting papers reviewed just in case. However, when it is clear that an exam marker has got it very wrong, there should be a process in place to ensure that all students have their paper reviewed. I think that might go some way to restoring a bit more confidence in the process.

I do exam marking. I can assure you the board has in place quality assurance to ensure that any mistakes are picked up - there’s literally no chance an examiner applied the mark scheme inaccurately across a large number of candidates without it being picked up and dealt with.

I hope you are right @Querty123456 however, don't feel reassured and agree with @Fourcandlesx that if a big mistake in marking is made by a marker, perhaps other papers should be reviewed on that question from that marker.

@mrsconradfisher I would be interested in your views here. (Got new name but we have 'met!')...
Although things working out for your ds now it has been a roller coaster for him due to inaccurate marking.

Yes DS has had a complete rollercoaster with his results this year. His OCR A level PE went up 6 marks ( on 2 papers) 2 were from marks not added up correctly (how on earth that’s possible I don’t know) and 4 were from the mark scheme not being applied correctly. He also had his PE practical downgraded after being told the grade at moderation, so he got 1 grade at school. Then got moderated and told another grade but the grade the moderators gave him was even lower than that. The whole cohort got at least 2 grades lower than predicted.

In terms of Psychology, his paper was also reviewed by his tutor who is an AQA examiner and she said it had been marked terribly. No consistently with the levels (I don’t entirely understand it) with them being marked at completely the wrong level.

It’s been 6 weeks of hell and stress since results day. DS has taken a gap year while he waited for the marking reviews to come back, last one came back on Friday and both subjects went up a grade.

A percentage of papers are compulsorily reviewed by a senior examiner during marking. If any discrepancy in the standard is identified, the examiner’s marking is paused and a selection of their other scripts are reviewed. The examiner is given clear feedback and is reminded firmly that they must maintain the standard. If the examiner continues to get it wrong they are stopped from marking altogether.

Examiners are human - they occasionally make mistakes. That is why a review of marking is available. People tend to ask for a review if they have a good reason to think there may be an error, so the proportion of reviewed papers where the mark changes is higher than it would be if all papers were reviewed. Almost no-one asks for a review of the mark is higher than expected, so it’s less common for a review of marking to lead to a lower mark.

For the individual student, the marks on one paper matter hugely. In the grand scheme of things, there are few requests for review, and very, very few grade changes.

My DD had one paper (of 3) reviewed and came back with an extra 14 marks (due to 'harsh marking' or similar) that bumped up her grade. It was tempting to send in her other two papers to see if she'd be bumped up again, but she was happy and had already got a place in her first choice Uni, even without the review.

I mentioned it to an old school friend of mine who said she had 2 of her subjects at A Level remarked (or whatever the process was 30 years ago!), and 2 of her subjects were bumped up, so it doesn't seem a new phenomenon.

I wonder if exam marking will eventually be done by AI...might then be more consistent.

@EmmaStone I hope not! For one thing can AI identify certain aspects to writing? Style? Creativity? Can AI look at some fairly idiosyncratic working out (I don't even know if kids are allowed to work things out like math or chemistry/physic problem)? Can AI judge artwork? A dramatic performance?
My daughter did well this cycle, but it has been shocking to see the addition of 6, 20, 15 marks to some papers. What if you did not have the resources or were ignorant of even the possibility of getting papers checked? So many missed out their places this year; sure the majority may have been correctly done, but it seems a few had such increases as to warrant closer scrutiny of the method employed. But we don't know - perhaps those particular examiners are now looking for new jobs!

@LoserWinner the process you describe where a percentage of papers are reviewed during marking by a senior examiner is obviously a good measure, however the fact that papers are still slipping through with huge marking errors (14 in the case of @EmmaStone ) shows it isn't capturing everything. I just strongly feel that in those cases, any papers / questions that were marked by that marker should automatically be reviewed. It sounds like it is done to a certain extent as a preventative measure but not if such errors have been identified at a later stage.

I also think that schools and colleges generally advise that reviews are only requested when looking for 1 or 2 marks and these could be errors which can clearly be seen by the school. I suspect the big marking discrepancies come in essay subjects like English and History where it is quite subjective. 14 marks is a huge amount and I think this is what the OP is talking about. It's not an odd mark here and there but a serious issue where marking has been found to be overly harsh and not consistent.

What you suggest isn’t logistically or economically viable. If an error is identified after results day, and then a few hundred papers have to be reviewed, the exam boards would need to pay senior examiners a lot to review them. This would increase the cost of reviews so that even fewer people could afford it, always assuming they could find senior examiners to do the work. After marking papers under intense time pressure in summer, most examiners would not sign up to do hundreds of reviews during the holidays or at the start of the school year.

Our school regularly sent back papers with unexpectedly low marks. Two of my DSs had English Lit papers awarded 18 or so extra marks. One of those two also had a paper in a different subject which was appealed by the school, came back with no change and the HT sent it to Michael Gove - then Ed Sec - as an example of terrible practice: original marker had simply not marked one answer and the appeal marker had failed to pick up the fact (clearly hadn't bothered to look at the paper at all). Extraordinary. Eventually the A* was awarded but what a faff.

The schools I work with say this year the volume of papers coming back with a grade increase has encouraged them to go back and look at results and send in more papers (esp with the gcse deadline being last week). I think when the exam boards report back on the level of grade changes it will be quite shocking.

I am not reassured at all. I can see not viable to retrospectively mark but clearly unfair marking stands. One then wonders what the point is in working for these exams? The whole system perhaps should be reviewed as overworked, underpaid markers seems to be the excuse. Undertrained as well? May not be markers fault but the systems but not acceptable.

One possibility people rarely seem to consider is that it is the teachers who got it wrong. Given the mass exodus of experienced staff in recent years, those mocks were marked by staff who may not have been accurate. And predicted grades are always optimistic - sometimes unrealistically so. Young, inexperienced staff are more likely to feel under pressure to 'inflate' grades. There was a deliberate tightening up of grades this year but it's worth considering the possibility that the grades the school was awarding/predicting were too high.

Examiners are well trained, experienced professionals who are paid an acceptable amount to do a feasible job. That they occasionally make errors is human - if you never err, perhaps you should consider examining yourself.

I guess some errors have big consequences....

@Ceit yes there is that to consider, however don't lots of schools sit AS levels which are externally marked? Ours did and predicted grades were very much in line with those results in addition to internally assesed mocks.

I see your point, and get it, but ultimately, lots of papers (anectdotally) seem to be coming back with massive changes (for balance, my son had a paper reviewed at GCSE this summer and it came back unchanged, but my DD's 14 mark uploift on 1 paper was a shocker), so that's nothing to do with predicted grade inflation?