Eduqas English - review of marking, can anyone advise?

[clarrylove]

Hi, really struggling to understand the process/what to do for the best and not getting responses from school. Hoping someone can explain how it works.

So for English Lit (Eduqas), my son's aggregated score was 99, which I understand was one mark off a 7. School have said we should go for a review but we have to pay and diet it out. Now, this is the bit t he st confuses me. There are 4 sections contained in paper 1 and paper 2. If we opt for one paper to be reviewed, does the cost cover both section of that paper or do we pay per section?

Also, how do the points add up? He did much worse in paper 2, so presumably more scope for points to go up, but was one point off a 9 in section 1B. Does this matter how close he was to the individual section grade boundaries or is it just the total aggregated score that counts? We can only afford to get one paper reviewed so need to pick carefully.

Am I even making sense here, I don't know any more!?! I think we are just looking for one point so does it matter which section this is on?

Any help appreciated. Thanks

Reviews of marking are not looking for marks - they're looking to see if the marks awarded are reasonable.
Someone with experience in the centre needs to look at the papers and make a judgement about whether mistakes have been made in awarding a mark (so they've given 2 but the comment written suggests it should have been 4) or whether something correct has been marked incorrect (not so likely in English) or whether a mark is unreasonable.
A review will look at a whole paper. There is no automatic grade protection: marks can go down as well as up.
Grade boundaries are set on the total marks.

From what I understand:

You pay per paper, not section.
The reviewer does not remark, as such. They look for mistakes in mark application, so if an answer was placed in a level x band but the reviewer felt it should be in level y band, the point difference will be added. However, if both marker and reviewer agree on the banding, no marks will be added, even if the reviewer might feel they would give it a mark or 2 more than the marker; this is because there is a tolerance level to allow for subjectivity.

A section/paper could move up to the next grade without changing the overall grade; it would have to move up by enough marks to move the whole aggregated grade up.

I actually wonder if it’s harder to gain marks when a paper is only one mark off the next grade because it suggests that the marker felt strongly that it should be at the top of one grade, but definitely not the bottom of the next one.
Thats just my perception, though, and I’m happy to be corrected.

@Alsoplayspiccolo you're pretty much spot on. This is why I think centres need to really look at the papers before the suggest parents cough up big sums of money in the hope of just one more mark.

The grade boundaries are not set until after the papers are marked, the markers won’t know if an extra mark will change the grade.

Yes, the examiner will be marking using level descriptors but these don’t equate to grades as the grade boundaries are set after the exam. If I give an A Level response 25 out of 30, that means I place it at the very top of Level 5 but don’t feel it quite does enough to get into Level 6. But that’s not the same as me deciding it’s a B grade rather than an A.

Sorry, that’s what I meant - I should have said “level” not grade.

Unless the Grade 7 is needed for next steps, wait until the school returns and ask that the Head of English gives advice, based on looking at the actual paper (which are free to request in 2022) then you know if the cost of the review is worth the risk. Given that school have encouraged him to do it but haven’t given any further advice, my guess would be that the person encouraging him isn’t 100% sure of the process either! He should really ask the head of English or whichever senior leader is in charge of exams.