Oh dear god they still don't have enough markers for GCSE English

[noblegiraffe]

This ad just popped up on my twitter feed.

And this just after the news that KS2 writing assessments are totally unreliable - apparently marking English is quite hard to get right.

It's going to be a car crash come August. No way are the results going to be reliable. Get your remark applications ready.

bear in mind. I corrected that twice and my phone still changed it!

but can they really lower them so much a 'c' ends up being less than 20%.

They may have to for maths higher tier. Last year on
Edexcel you needed 35% on higher to get a C. This year the paper is far harder. Edexcel were practically begging schools to enter borderline candidates for foundation instead to avoid the grade boundaries being on the floor.

DoctorDonna

Point taken.

And my vote will not be going to the Conservatives

It might not be as bad as you think. One of the teachers in my department applied to mark AQA English this year, was accepted, and then they got back to her and said they had no Language vacancies left, only Literature. Plus, there's a large pool of people who used to moderate coursework who may well have gone over to the exam.

As an experienced examiner (and TL), I agree that the pay is too low, and if AQA have cut the rate whilst the duration of the exam has increased, then that is appalling.

I used to get £3.50 a paper for Lit. It adds up if you do hundreds, but if you do hundreds you're talking morning, noon and night for 3 weeks. Nearly killed me every time I did it.

It does give you an amazing insight though which helps so much when you're teaching. You know exactly what gets the marks and what doesn't.

Last year we were told that Edexcel weren't remarking English any more and that if we asked for remarks of papers that were on the borderline then all they would check was that the marks had been added up and entered properly. I don't know if this is still the case but I hope not- marking English is so subjective and examiners differ all the time. A tired examiner on their 20th paper (60th essay) of the day may well miss a couple of points that could have made a huge difference to that student.

Apologies if this has already been posted, but what with the horrendous maths papers this week and that OCR students studying Romeo and Juliet effectively 'lost' 25% of marks due to an erroneous question.

www.tes.com/news/school-news/breaking-news/pupils-ridicule-exam-board-over-shakespeare-error-gcse-paper

I'd be amazed if they had enough markers. I last marked GCSE English Language 9 years ago, and along with several other markers at my school returned scripts, unmarked after they changed the mark scheme half way through the marking. This was the AQA.

With AQA it's partly because you now have to mark online which is ok for short questions but hard for essay type ones
It will be worse next year I think when people work out what it's like marking on screen
Lots of experienced people have left because of this

God if the markers that they do have start refusing to mark when they realise how hard the job ahead is (can you do that if you are on a contract?) then there's the possibility of not meeting the results deadline.
Remember the fiasco of the KS3 SATs marking when the results were a month overdue?

You sign a new contract each year with AQA so you can walk away whenever you want noble

Ironic that non British born writers have been removed from Gove's English Literature syllabus, but I suspect that many well educated 'non British born' examiners will be being recruited to mark these online papers.

This is a big business.

Publishing companies like Murdoch's Pearson make a fortune out of this. Gove works for Murdoch.

Their unethical conduct is at the expense of teenagers' results and mental health, and teachers marking on appalling pay and condition.

Their contempt for the 'customers' and exam markers is clear.

Schools and teachers should boycott the exam boards.

But can you walk away mid-contract, mrskeats? Not complete your allocation?

I haven't but sometimes I pick up extra marking from examiners who have given up
poor really

You have your allocation taken away if you don't meet the required standard, so last minute markers are required.

Hi noblegiraffe. Some examiners drop out for genuine reasons, such as illness or bereavement. As long as they are straight with their TL and don't go off the radar for two weeks, refusing to answer emails, phone calls and texts then they will probably be invited to mark again.

Other examiners give up because the work is more time consuming than they expected / they don't like marking online / they just can't be arsed. When my board still had face-to-face standardising meetings it wasn't unknown for people to sign up as examiners and treat the day's training as CPD. They'd get paid £120 - £150 for attending, maybe even a night in a hotel, and they never had any intention of marking a single live script. As a previous poster said, some people are also stopped because their marking is so erratic.

The most difficult part of being a TL is hand-holding your team and making sure that as many as possible of them finish their allocation on time. It can be extremely stressful, to put it mildly. When TLs gather together, they tend to swap war stories about their worst ever examiners

I had an amazing TL. I don't know how you do it Cinder!

Neither do I sometimes IHeart, neither do I. I just think of the extra money it brings in

Cinder I have had an email asking if I would reconsider. Do you think I would be ok without having done this years training days? Have experience but am aware the marking scheme is much harder etc.

Thanks for the explanation, Cinder. I've considered exam marking in the past for the CPD but the teachers at my school who do it pretty much say it's awful and takes over your life. At this point of the year I'm starting to think about winding down to the summer!

I imagine with maths, being a marker is much less useful for informing your teaching practice than in English or similar subjects?

I don't mark English so don't know the specifics of that one but I've found for the last few times I've marked that I've been asked to take on extra scripts (at no extra rate per paper, must be marking for the wrong boards).

From what I've heard this is a combination of other examiners not meeting the required standards or realising part way through that they can't finish on time for whatever reason.

I work part time and see marking as a second job rather than a bit of extra cash so always make sure I get my allocation done on time and meet all the admin deadlines.

I'm getting offered more work each sitting which would suggest my boards are struggling for examiners

I have marked for AQA for an A level social science in the past but have refused since they changed to fully online marking. I found marking essays on a screen excruciating, hated the software which was slow and hard to use and generally the whole thing was just not worth the unpleasantness of staring at badly scanned handwriting on a laptop screen for hours getting headaches and RSI.

I can't really imagine marking lengthy English essays online - I found it much harder to hold a sense of even short essay questions in my head when I had to scroll back and forth to look at it than when I could see it all in front of me on paper. I imagine they will find more drop out if this is the first year it's been fully online.

wannabe, the exam board must be confident that you can do it (examiners are graded after each session) or they wouldn't have asked you. They might even have some web-based training you can access to bring you up to speed. Whether you want to spend the next few weeks marking is up to you.....As others have said, it takes over your life .

Now I must go - scripts calling.

They have even given me options (worryingly) am considering it. Am only part time at the mo due to extreme ill health so it may stop me from glazing over (or not)

If their only issue is recruiting enough markers then they are possibly already doing better than the ks2/3 fiasco, noble.

At least the exam boards have experience of the process so everything else isn't going wrong alongside a shortage of markers.

I mark GCSE English for Aqa and have for a long time. I have been asked to be available after the end of marking date so they are clearly expecting the marking to take longer. This has happened before so it's nothing new.