Three week wait for mock results

[ChocLover2015]

for ASs .Does this seem a heck of a long time? Surely they should go through it while it is fresh in their minds

Some places like to do it with a full mock results day. They'll still go through the papers later, but get that "there's nothing I can do now" feeling with the brown envelope. The idea, I think, is that students learn that there's still time to work hard and ensure they feel they've done everything they could by the real results day.

Or they might be busy teaching. Which is a thing.

yes they are doing the mock results day too ! I think it's the first year they've done it though, but I suppose thay have to try these things!

Staff may be marking GCSEs. And a2's. Higher priority?

why would they be higher priority in these days of no re-sits?

For Mock GCSEs we'd expect about this turnaround, tbh.

1. Lead teacher for this component (ie. usually whoever marks for the exam board) marks a range of papers to standardise marking & gives feedback at a departmental meeting
2. Everyone goes off & marks their group's papers - or sometimes they're shared out alphabetically to avoid bias - 30 scripts could take anywhere up to 10 hours to mark, so every evening for a week, or all weekend. Bear in mind that marking & planning for other year groups will also still need to be done. I usually designate a weekend for one group, but of course it'll take longer if I have two groups.
3. After the internal marking deadline, everyone swaps a proportion of their papers for internal moderation
4. Assuming no problems thrown up in moderation, marks submitted to HOD to calculate final grades - how lengthy this process is obviously depends on CA/coursework components, if any.
5. Often, mocks in a range of subjects will have been done over a period of time & all results go out as a mock 'Results' Day' - so exams taken at the start of the week/fortnight may be sat on until those at the end have had time to standardise, mark, moderate, calculate.
6. Papers returned to students.

It's genuinely not the case that the teacher shoves them in her briefcase, marks them in front of Corrie & could give them back next day....

Bloody hell, thank god I'm a maths teacher. While I don't mark in front of Corrie, I could conceivably mark a set of papers in an evening. No wonder the kids always look surprised when I hand stuff back the next day!

My department of 6 had over 3000 papers to mark in the last round of mocks.

3 weeks is acceptable.

I had 68 mock exam papers to mark for english (two papers). I timed myself and it took me about 30 hours.

Seems about right to me. Don't forget the staff are also teaching their normal timetable, planning and setting work, marking other year groups work too. As others have said, if you want quality feedback from those marking essay subjects, you need to give them time to put the time into marking them.

DS has had AS mocks last week and and they are having a mock results day this week. Sixth form college so AS/A levels only. They also had no lessons in exam week so I presume the teachers had some free time to mark?