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Original poster

English GCSE remark : expert objective advice needed!!

602 replies

Piggywaspushed · 28/08/2017 19:56

Ok, I have been batting this round on a few threads and need to preface this by saying I am an English teacher... but it isn't helping me at all!

DS got a 5 in Lang and a 6 In Lit. Both below (rather generous ) target grades of 7.
We d found out he was 5 UMS marks into 5 in Lang and therefore needs 8 marks (I think) to get a 6. Not normal remark territory and I'd be terrified of him being downgraded.

However, I have now found out his breakdown and it is bizarre:

Language paper 1

1.4/4
2.4/8
3.3/8
4.12/20
5.8/24 + 6/16

Language paper 2

1.4/4
2.5/8
3.5/12
4.6/16
5.18/24 + 11/16 (this is amazing compared to paper 1!)

The last wording is not mine but the HOD.

The discrepancy between P1 and P2 is marked and the section Bs are the real oddity given that they aren't very different tasks. I have checked and he did paragraph. You also need to know his spelling is highly proficient. He has that teenage predilection for commas and probably didn't use much punctuation other than full stops and commas. His handwriting is hard to read sometimes but he does tend to write quite lengthy answers and was (before the exams) quite confident in jumping through the hoops of each question.

I would be interested to hear from fellow English teachers who have no emotional investment in this what they might advise? I'd like Paper 1 looked at - but once seen it can't be remarked.

I know a 5 is 'good enough' but he is a better student than that. In one of his lit papers he missed an 8 by one mark!

Any thoughts gratefully received.

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Original poster
Piggywaspushed · 29/08/2017 08:51

Nothing - if used correctly, as you model so beautifully above!

I think it is only Edexcel who let you see the script and then go for a remark. It's definitely not normal and will open huge floodgates for re-marking and appeals, so I have no idea why they alone are doing this, unless they have absolute confidence in their marking.

A sample will be double and possibly triple checked - a larger sample if there are concerns about a marker, but , in reality , a small number of individual students will have papers looked at.

Examiners come in all shapes and sizes. Certainly , some are known to be crap. they are not re-employed the following year : but that is then too late for the students.

However, in my DS's school, I don't think he was part of a general low pattern : he is more of an anomaly.

DH isn't being particularly constructive either. He says no one can read DS's handwriting and his grammar is shit. Oh well.

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Original poster
Piggywaspushed · 29/08/2017 08:56

*loose' he is a demon for comma splicing so they won't always have been correct,no.

The detailed thing bothers me : were examiners really told they had to look for 'detail' and how is that quantified for marks out of 8, for example? I think this is where the system would disadvantage pithy boys. That said, my DS tends to write in a lot of detail. His grade 8 for one lit paper suggest he certainly can analyse!

My friends both marked this year for AQA : one was a team leader. Both of them thought the guidance from AQA was a bit 'loose'

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Original poster
Piggywaspushed · 29/08/2017 08:57

The P2 essay is more up his street than the P1 : he hated that stupid bus face task!

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Danglingmod · 29/08/2017 09:09

I think I need to stop reading some of these threads at the moment with all these surprise 8s and 7s for students who don't have great technical accuracy.

My ds writes better than most adults I know, including English teachers! He never makes a spag error, has a vast vocabulary, uses a range of sentence types (naturally, not in a forced way). He got 2 7s. He will probably have dropped marks in the middle section of both papers, getting something like 8/20 down to timing as he knew to move strictly onto the last section halfway through.

Danglingmod · 29/08/2017 09:11

Oh, and he doesn't always do detail but is concise and analytical. He can say more in one sentence than most people can in one paragraph.

Cafeconleche · 29/08/2017 09:32

Blankety - and anyone else who knows anything about typed exams - can you help me on this? My DS used a laptop for every exam bar maths. For some exams (English, History etc) everything was typed on the laptop. For others (Sciences, music etc) it was part exam paper (graphs, diagrams, notations etc) and part laptop for the longer essay-type components of the exam. At the end of each exam, the invigilator collect the USB stick from my DS. I've just asked him if any of his work for any of the exams was printed off for him to sign and he has told me no. After the invigilator took the USB stick he was told he could go. Maybe I am being overly paranoid, but is this the norm? If I have his history paper looked at online (it's Edexcel) how will the teacher know it is his work if it is typed, yet unsigned? Any advice gratefully received....

LooseAtTheSeams · 29/08/2017 09:54

Typed exams went to more senior markers than me, I'm afraid.
By detail, I just mean that he may have correctly identified a language device and given an example, but not have said why it is effective or why the author uses it. That gets more marks. The comparison marking in paper 2 is quite lenient on structure, but the very highest marks go to answers that synthesise, rather than summarise one extract and then the other, In an exam situation I suspect candidates are really pushed for time and sometimes just try to get something down on paper. If candidates write about only one extract in a comparison question they still get credit for it but there's obviously a cap on the marks you can have because it's not a comparison.

It's a hard exam, to be honest, for most students.
Comma splices will put technical accuracy in a lower band if there are too many of them because marks are awarded for accurate sentence demarcation. However, an occasional mistake is understandable and definitely wouldn't explain the difference between the two papers on section B.

LooseAtTheSeams · 29/08/2017 10:24

oh, the other thing I'd check with AQA is if you can have the paper and a remark if you request both at the same time. This was definitely allowed last year - what AQA told my College was that we couldn't ask to see the paper and then ask for a remark. That was the old specification, though, but it's worth asking if they will do that for you this time.

Original poster
Piggywaspushed · 29/08/2017 10:28

I think I need to stop reading some of these threads at the moment with all these surprise 8s and 7s for students who don't have great technical accuracy.

Not sure where that is on this thread dangling. I agree it's on others which is why I started this one. My DS got a 5 and writes generally accurately, and never misspells.

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Original poster
Piggywaspushed · 29/08/2017 10:31

To be honest loose , I think the expectation on students in a timed exam are unrealistic, especially the definition of comparison and synthesis but it is what it is. I have seen a range of sample answers and have never thought they are very helpful but hey ho.

It would just frustrate me to get his paper back and disagree and then not have his mark changed so I think I will avoid getting the paper back, even if I could.

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Original poster
Piggywaspushed · 29/08/2017 10:34

I sometimes wonder how much best fit marking is going on as well. certainly one of the women I know who is marking seems to not see the mark scheme descriptors as a suite of things which they don't need to match in entirety but a kind of 'oh they did everything but they didn't comment on sentence length so it can't be in that band'. I have never thought that was the approach encouraged in marking. To be fair, she was told she was being harsh at one stage.

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LooseAtTheSeams · 29/08/2017 10:59

Piggy I'd say she was definitely too harsh. I was very careful with my marking and constantly referring to the guidelines, which are quite good about banding. I stopped when I reached my allocation, though, as the concentration needed is pretty exhausting!
I think the exam is too demanding and I think getting rid of the foundation paper compounds the unfairness for many students.

Danglingmod · 29/08/2017 11:08

Sorry, Piggy; it was inappropriate to put my comment on this thread. I thought there had been such remarks earlier in this thread but I have been flicking backwards and forwards between many of them.

My apologies.

Cafeconleche · 29/08/2017 11:24

Loose does that mean that all typed exams go to senior examiners? If so, is there any particular reason for this?

LooseAtTheSeams · 29/08/2017 11:39

Cafe not sure tbh! All mine were handwritten scripts that were then scanned into the system. My team leader was marking scripts outside that system.

LooseAtTheSeams · 29/08/2017 11:39

It would probably be for technical reasons, to be fair.

Cafeconleche · 29/08/2017 12:36

Thanks for the insight Loose although I'm now not sure what to do about having certain papers remarked if typed exams are marked by senior examiners Hmm. There's less chance of the grades going up a band because they were probably marked correctly, but then I suppose there's also less chance of them going down Confused. DS's school is closed today. I'm in tomorrow to see the HOY and, if the exams officer is also in, I'll get a breakdown/score for every answer on the exams with 'odd' grades and take it from there. The school have been very good at querying student's exams which were within a few UMS of the grade above (got an 8 but was aiming for a 9 Hmm), but not so great at looking at the raw scores and checking for anomalies for grades at the lower end. I'm having one science paper remarked because the grade for one paper (DS's best) made absolutely no sense. The score suggested he hadn't even bothered to turn up. As I've said in earlier threads, I'm new to this game and am still only just getting to grips with the various terminologies - raw score, UMS etc. In my naivety I thought that the school checked all those things - my fault, I guess. Anyway, my next port of call will be for DS's teachers to have a look at his Edexcel exams on line and we can decide if it's worth putting them in for a remark. I realise that (as piggy said earlier here or on another thread) this may open them up to a flood of requests for remarking, but why not if a problem or mistake is spotted in the original marking? It's a shame the other boards have not done the same thing. Too much could be riding on this for many kids and I'm all for transparency. At least my DS would know where he stood, learn from it and move on. In the end, DS is going to a different 6th form so that he can do A Levels his current school doesn't offer (namely MFL) and I get the feeling that they're very much just going through the motions with us now. His old teachers have been fantastic, his HOY not so much...

Original poster
Piggywaspushed · 29/08/2017 13:26

No worries dangling - so many threads I can see you would be confused and I agree with the sentiments :)

Loose , can you answer a query? Does the SAME examiner mark the whole of a paper, or are there different markers for different Qs? The former would make me think more that DS had come up against a person with an issue with him; the latter would make me feel it was probably just a v bad day for poor old DS.

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cricketballs · 29/08/2017 13:36

Piggy the exam board I mark for we mark the questions not the whole paper, there are times (due to unusual handwriting) that I can tell if I have marked another question by that candidate but in all the years I have marked using this system I have never marked every single question in the paper of the same recognisable handwriting.

Original poster
Piggywaspushed · 29/08/2017 13:39

Thanks cricket - was different when I marked many moons ago! We did whole papers. Your way seems very convoluted but possibly less open to students being affected by a duff examiner.

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LooseAtTheSeams · 29/08/2017 14:20

Yes, I was marking individual answers not exam papers. The handwriting would need to really stand out for me to make any kind of connection!

LooseAtTheSeams · 29/08/2017 14:30

Cafe just wanted to wish you all the best with the school - definitely helps if the teachers can see the papers online and if they have queries, go for the remark/check.

ProfessorLayton1 · 29/08/2017 14:32

I did not realise that there are several examiners correcting a paper.
How do they give the papers to the examiners ?
Sorry dumb question- do they scan them all or photocopy them and give it to different examiners.
While it will prevent from a harsh examiner correcting a paper and decr are the variations it is open to a lot of clerical error isn't it?

KickAssAngel · 29/08/2017 14:35

I've never marked exams, but have taught for years. My first reaction to paper 1 would be that he ran out of time and had to rush the longer questions? It's possible to do that but not even really realize. Pupils look at the time, think "oh yeah, only running 5 minutes behind, but can still do this OK" but then their writing (thinking, planning, detail etc) is all rushed and way below their best ability. All sorts of mistakes come through, but because they finish everything they don't think they messed up the timing.

Exams tend to bring out the worst that a person can do. There are times when this is good (we want to know how bad a surgeon can be, on an off day, rather than only what their best is, for example) but it is harsh that children get judged and selected for A levels etc based on them.

As for a remark? Maybe. If it affects A Level choices/school etc then it might be worth it, just so that he can have a real choice. He may be saying he doesn't want a fuss because he's resigned to choice B, rather than because he wants it. I have no idea if grades can go down rather than up, though, so check that first.

Original poster
Piggywaspushed · 29/08/2017 14:58

Grdes can go down which I did menton at the outset is a concern.

I'm a teacher, too, so know what you mean about time- but he is capable of writing lots in a short space of time. This does affect quality of response - but wouldn't turn him from the kind of student who can get 11/16 for what is essentially a Spag mark to one who can only get 6/16 on the other paper. In the markscheme that indicates someone who 'sometimes' punctuates correctly and occasionally spells a complex word correctly. No matter his foibles with comma splicing those terms don't describe him at all. He is absolutely sure he paragraphed and wrote a couple of sides.

Personally I thin examiners marking individual questions prevents them from getting into the rhythm of a paper - I think it's a double edged sword.

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