Worth requesting a remark?

[PushItToTheMax]

DD is 3 marks from an A in her best subject, which she is gutted about as she was predicted an A star and her results look well below her normal marks. She is going on to study this subject at uni, will also need postgraduate qualifications.

She is also 1 mark from an A in her 2nd favourite subject - this one was a shock the other way as she’s achieved a lot better than we expected!

She has met her grades for her firm so doesn’t technically need higher grades, but for her best subject especially she’s absolutely gutted and can’t stop crying. I think it’s really knocked her confidence about studying it at uni.

I can just about afford the remark costs but it will be tight. I’m just a bit unsure what to do for the best. We didn’t get to speak to teachers at school this morning as DD was distraught, trying desperately to hold her tears in until she got to the car. I’m trying to reassure her that BBB is actually really good, that she’s in to her firm but it’s not really sinking in.

To be clear, the "£60 per paper" is literally per paper, not per subject. Subjects tend to have at least 3 papers, if not 4. My son's four AQA physics papers totalled £240 and if we had wanted to query any of his Edexcel maths papers they would have cost even more - £90 each!

One question I have about remarks, having seen my son’s papers, is that they don’t have the mark awarded per question noted beside each question. Apparently this is because they are marked on a screen. So how do people know that the marks have accurately been added to produce the total shown for each paper? The only place the mark per question is given is on the total mark sheet.

That's paper and board specific. But if I look at a paper where the comment is "excellent" and the mark is 10, they don't match. So I might challenge that.

It's why you need someone who knows what they're doing to have a look.

I just wanted to record (for any parents reading this in the future!) that my nephew has (rightly) been upgraded to an A* following a priority remark. If you are able to raise the finances for a remark where you are a borderline case, it really is worth doing. Examiners are under pressure, busy people and do not always apply the marking criteria correctly/get it right first time.

Just had DS's remark back for one humanities paper which was unexpectedly much lower than predicted. The mark went up by 13 marks, which takes him up to an A overall for the subject.

He already had the grades for his firm offer so it made no difference to that, but he now feels satisfied that the subject grade reflects his own impression of his exam performance.

Great news, @Universalism

@MrsHamlet , very glad we requested the remark, was definitely worth it.

@Universalism was that a priority remark? We're still waiting for my son's physics remark, so I'm slightly regretting not paying the extra few pounds for priority.

@truzty no, not a priority remark as it didn't affect his university offer. I was very surprised it came through so quickly, wasn't expecting to hear back for a couple of weeks.

Hope you get good news for your son's physics remark.

DD’s extra 3 marks for eng lit didn’t come through. Didn’t affect uni place but still disappointed.

Great news, @jessiejojo and @Universalism

@MrsHamlet I was thinking more about how you described the marking process with the potential for errors.

In particular, there are a number of stories here every year about unread pages. You pointed out that if the pages aren’t scanned they cannot be marked.

DH and I were wondering is it not policy to scan every page of the exam booklet? Based on university marking, where the marker(s) must demonstrate that every page has been looked at, this seems reasonable. Also it could be automated.

If this is already done, someone should be flagging booklets that are short.

It is policy, that's what they do the scan every page. Occasionally with the sheer amount of paper they make mistakes (last year AQA scanned 176m sheets of paper, I think I that's correct or something similar). The machines are currently running and they get the normal warehouse workers and hire hundreds of temporary workers as well, it's long shifts and human error happens. The machines scans everything and everywhere where there is pen writing (unless you write in the margins).

Thanks, @TheLivelyViper

I guess the only thing is to tick off how many pages are scanned for each candidate, for each paper (and warn candidates not to write elsewhere). It should be a multiple of the number of pages in a booklet, or be flagged. Do you know if this happens?

This is in response to @MrsHamlet suggesting that one problem with unmarked work is that it was never scanned. We can’t know how much of the problem is down to this but it is very serious when it occurs. Presumably it mostly goes undetected, because most papers are not reviewed.

Sorry - have been at work.

So the booklets which have questions and a space for answers have a set number of pages and it's easy to see if any have been missed because they're numbered.

Blank booklets are also numbered.

Typed pages are more challenging. My centre makes them add page numbers so p1/4 or whatever but I don't think that's a solid rule.

Candidates are told in the rubric where to write and not - we still see all manner of weird and wonderful arrows and stars and goodness knows what.

Thanks, @MrsHamlet

I’m not understanding how we get so many tales of unread work, such a serious issue

Well, I've been doing this job a long time and I've honestly never seen it happen.

And that obviously doesn't mean it doesn't - but we're talking about millions of bits of paper...

I've asked for some papers back today where marks are blank. I'm 97% sure that will be because they wrote nothing but I'm going to check just in case.

To be fair, we’re only hearing a very limited and very biased sample!

If 175 million pages are scanned, an error rate of 0.05% (say) would be about 875,000 pages (if my quick mental arithmetic is roughly correct).

That sounds like a lot but it’s a tiny error rate.

Agreed! But our error rate is essentially 0% after all the checking we do. I have never heard of an unread page of an exam making it through the system.

If it did, the consequences would be less as this would affect just one of many modules used in the degree classification. For A levels and GCSEs, even 250,000 unread pages has consequences for many lives.

If there are strict instructions to write only on the pages that will be scanned then this could be hammered home well before exams begin. (It sounds like some writing on the covers etc may be missed) If candidates are answering questions on nonconsecutive pages, which is not unreasonable, the scanning and marking process needs to ensure this is picked up.

I do appreciate the daunting nature of the task, but it is easily distributed. It does require formidable coordination. (I know it is annoying for markers to skim through largely irrelevant pages for further work on their own question, because that is our procedure. I am not clear whether that already happens at A level and GCSE)

Pupils with fewer life chances are less likely to question whether this has happened to them - I know you are acutely aware of this already, @ParmaVioletTea, but not everyone is.

Happy to report that my DC's physics grade has gone up from B to A following review. (He was previously 2 marks below the boundary).

Great news, @truzty . Did the school support DS on this?

He didn't ask for support. The letter we got with the results said teachers were available to support in each subject, but we didn't notice that until after submitting all 4 papers for review. He went up by 3 marks and down by 1, which gave him the net two he needed, but only just. It doesn't change his uni outcome, but will make him feel better about his results. 🙂

That’s great news @truzty

We’ve had similar good news here. After one paper was reviewed DD has gone up by 5 marks to an A. Like your DS, it doesn’t affect uni but she is definitely happier with her results. Thanks for all the support and advice.

Thanks for the update. Good to hear!

@PushItToTheMax I am SO thrilled for your daughter- and you! So many congratulations. I hope that she feels so proud when she puts that A on her CV.