Over harsh coursework marking?

[DorotheaDiamond]

DD has just got her (OCR) product design gcse coursework mark and I cannot for the life of me understand why it’s so low. I’ve been through the exam board marking guidance and she seems to
have hit all the points.

her teacher has said in the past that he wouldn’t have given a 9 to the exam board example of a 9 which makes me think he’s being over strict on the mark scheme.

There’s only 2 teachers in the school who have both been involved in the marking already so I’m not sure how a remark could work, plus dd is worried that asking for a remark will piss them off and result in an even lower mark…

anyone been in this position? Or know an ocr teacher who could advise?

My understanding is that you have a certain amount of time to appeal (2 weeks??). It should then be checked by someone not involved on the original marking and moderation, even if this means getting a teacher from another school to do it. OCR will carry out their own moderation though and if your teacher is really strict that should in theory be rectified.

This. Ask for a copy of the procedure.
You can challenge the marking if you feel it's not been done correctly. You can't seek your own external remarking though - it has to be done by the school.

Problem is the mark scheme is one of those terribly vague ones - 20 marks split across 4 bands with descriptions like “shows detailed understanding of” vs “shows understanding of” so it’s totally subjective!

it’s such a gamble - if she aces the written she could squeak an 8 but if her marks drop on remark that’s impossible:-(

'her teacher has said in the past that he wouldn’t have given a 9 to the exam board example of a 9' - it's worth noting that grades are only given after all the components are added up and the exam boards decide on the boundaries, to be applied nationally. A mark that might be equivalent to a grade 9 one year might not necessarily be a 9 the next, and individual components are never graded.

When the teachers submit the coursework marks to the exam board they need to provide written justification, indicating why they've place the work in a particular band with reference to the different assessment objectives, and the exam board then moderates it.

It's definitely worth asking for the school to have it re-marked - if you think the marking is on the lower end, it seems unlikely that it will go down.

@DorotheaDiamond Deciding how to allocate marks to a grade descriptor is actually not as random as you might think. To achieve the higher mark the student needs to show understanding by including examples or ideas which may meet the criteria to a greater or lesser extent, and then justify their choices. A student who just says why they chose one or two ideas with little justification would get the lower (range of) marks

If it's a foundation subject it might be that they have to send off the whole cohort to the moderator if the sample is small - meaning it will be externally checked. You could ask the Head of Department whether that's the case.

The JCA guidelines say that your DD can request a remark and if she is still unhappy can request one from an external source.
If she doesn't get this she can appeal as the procedures have not been fully followed.

Do not rely on the exam board moderators to up mark work due to harsh marking as this (in my experience) is quite rare.

@crazecatlady2 dont suppose you’re a PD teacher are you? Really need an external opinion!

Asking for a remark of coursework is different from asking for a remark of an examined paper. The teacher will have been asked not only to mark coursework but also to rank it over the centre so if one person wants a remark it would affect ranks as well as individual marks. For this reason it doesn't really happen with coursework. However this centre, as all centres, will have coursework sampled and someone from the exam board will review his marking of sample pieces of coursework and if they think it is overly harsh by say 4 marks then will adjust all students work by 4 marks. There is generally a 2-3 mark tolerance.

Within a given period for the mark being reported to your DC and yourself, you can ask the school for what's called a 'review of marking'. You have to argue that either the mark scheme has not been appropriately applied or that there has been an admin error eg miscalculating. This is not a 'remark' as it's not an exam. The school can allocate another appropriately qualified marker to mark it which has to be someone not originally involved in the marking. All schools must have a published policy on this. You need to move quickly to request this as it's a short window and you can only do it on the basis of the two reasons above. However, that review might allocate a lower mark. Even if the review moves the mark up, the school have the right to notify the exam board that they do not agree with the reviewer's mark. NEA samples will be reviewed by the exam board, so if the school are out of tolerance then the school's marks may be adjusted, but that may or may not impact on your DC - it may be that they are being slightly mean at the top end but not elsewhere. You may be right. On the other hand, it can be very tricky and time consuming for schools when parents start getting 'friends and contacts' to look at their child's NEA when they don't work on the specific specification or even in schools at this level, but happen to have a degree in it for example. 'Outsiders' won't have had the training on how the mark scheme works and what exemplars from the exam board look like to illustrate what the mark scheme means. I hope that helps.

This is the statutory doc you need:

https://www.jcq.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Notice-to-Centres-Informing-candidates-of-their-centre-assessed-marks22233_FINAL.pdf

You are entitled to request a remark for NEA but you‘d have to show that the criteria had not been applied correctly. Another teacher who knows the specification and has not been involved with the NEA process ( which would include the standardising process so highly unlikely for a two-person department) then needs to check it against the mark scheme. As has been pointed out, the grades aren’t decided until August and the grade boundaries were more lenient last year - it’s entirely possible that what was given a certain mark last year would have got an 8 in 2019 and previously.

If you can prove that the criteria have been applied incorrectly then the school will have to find another person with the right experience from another school - not easy, as schools do different boards and don’t always offer the same subjects within Technology. This other marker is entitled to request a fee and it is possible that you and not the school would have to pay it - more common in private schools. It’s also the busiest time of year for teachers of practical subjects so there’s no guarantee that anyone would be prepared to do this when their own workloads are so heavy. The next step would be for the school to ask the board for advice, if they can’t source a teacher.

JCQ, the body that oversees the exam boards, recommended that schools have an NEA policy to cover these eventualities so contact the exams Officer for a copy. You also have to lodge an appeal quickly - the marks for most A Levels and GCSEs have to be with the exam boards by 15 May and there are two strike days and two bank holidays in the mix this year.

Thanks all - we have the marks back for each of the marking points.

the marking is done in bands - eg
bad (can’t remember their terms) 0-5
mediocre 6-10
good 11-15
excellent 16-20

dd is consistently in “good” but at the bottom of the band. Am I right in thinking that the remarker would have to change the band for them to consider it a “different” mark? I know that’s how it’s done for things like English which gets marked in bands?

The school remark policy says “if the mark could reasonably be awarded with regards to the mark scheme it must stand” which I think means that even if it is out by 1 or 2 in each marking point it won’t change….even though that could be 10% in total!

Most annoying is teacher has been saying that it was all fine and didn’t need anything else doing!

Being out by one or two marks is what we call within tolerance - for example, if I marked a piece then a colleague moderated it to one or two marks higher/lower it would probably stand as long as that wasn’t the case for every single piece of work.

Am I right in thinking that the remarker would have to change the band for them to consider it a “different” mark? I know that’s how it’s done for things like English which gets marked in bands
That's not quite how it works.
If you think the marking hasn't been done fairly or accurately, you need to ask for the policy and then work through the stages. Noone here can look at it because it's up to the school to appoint someone to do that.

In the nicest possible way there is no reason for a teacher to mark lower than it should be, particularly on coursework. They generally do all they can to justify every extra mark and mark as generously as they feel they will get away with. Teachers are under a lot of pressure to ensure pupils hit grades, so it seems likely that in the teacher's professional opinion this is the best they can award.

Yes you are correct. If deemed to be in the correct band she won't get given additional marks.

Normally I would agree (certainly in every other subject school don’t let work go in that isn’t top marks), but I’ve spoken to this teacher and the fact that he has said he wouldn’t mark the exemplar paper as high as the exam board did suggests to me that he is being over harsh in his interpretation.

tbh I think the exam board descriptions of the bands (which is what the teachers are using as their marking guidelines) are impossible to achieve in the 40-50 hours of work that this project is supposed to take! Just doing the CAD drawings took 4 or 5 hours, 20 PowerPoint slides at minimum 30 minutes each, let alone all the research and planning!

Thank you - that’s what I thought! The annoying thing is a tolerance of 1/2 marks across 5 different assessment areas pretty much covers 3 grade boundaries!!!

Only if there's only one assessment objective. Prime marking seeks to award the "correct" mark. If there's more than one AO, as with one of my specs, I have to award 4 marks to come to a final mark.
Tolerance is considered by the moderator. I could be in the right band but at the wrong end, depending on the range of marks in the band.

If you are very confident he is overly harsh, then you have nothing to lose by following the appeals procedure. If the school is in a MAT, for example, they could ask someone in a different school but the same MAT to take a look at it- this would be pretty normal.

Obviously, the risk is he is not overly harsh, and her mark goes down. At the moment, if she is still capable of a 7 or an 8 in the subject, that is all she will need to progress to the next stage (probably not even that) and won't be an issue for uni entry.

How does your daughter feel about it?

you‘d have to show that the criteria had not been applied correctly

This.

Also, I'm an English teacher, and I also wouldn't give top marks to some of the top marks exemplars. This is the nature of subjectively marked subjects - of course examiners are going to disagree. If you have good reason to believe that there has been an error in the marking though, by all means put in for an appeal. At my school you have to state a reason why you believe the marking is inaccurate - appeals are not accepted if that reason is not given.