For many Qs, there are ‘levels’ of marking. For an essay, there can be 5 levels of marking, with each level having several marks within it. So L5 might be 20-25 marks, where the total for the Q is 25 marks.
When reviewing the marking examiners look to see if the first marker placed in the correct level or band. So a reviewer might decide that a Q which got 20/25 was reasonably marked, even if they might have given it 24/25, because it was within the correct band of 20-25. If however, the original marker gave it 19/25 and it was in L4 and the reviewer thought it deserved L5, then that’s not reasonable or considered ‘out of tolerance’ and so can be changed.
Esoecially in essay subjects at A Level which can be worth Lots of marks and have pretty wide levels or bands, it’s possible for them to be a fairly substantial change. Of course, missing Qs out when marking and adding up incorrectly also account for changes. Sciences often have more questions worth fewer marks each. A dodgy examiner might make errors on lots of questions and each might only result in a change of a couple of marks, because the levels are narrow. Cumulatively, it can be possible to gain lots of marks….but this is rare to get a rogue or dodgy marker. Therefore science and maths papers will rarely gain more than a couple of marks of going up, unless wholenoages have been missed etc. However, it’s not that unusual for an essay to be marked bottom L4 and something like 16/24 to be moved to L5 and to be given 22/25…so a gain of 6 marks from one question. But this question might have taken an hour to write and been a third if the whole paper.
Sadly there are errors and review of marks after looking at scripts and/or when there’s a big surprise or a mismatch of results on the different papers that’s not expected, is well worth it. In my view, lots of parents have no awareness of the possibilities of looking into it or the processes and no sense of the fact errors happen or that their child shouldn’t be satisfied with whatever they were given. Without a doubt, those from more affluent and more switched-on families get more reviews if marking done and therefore see the increases in grades. Some people have suggested there should be tiered pricing for review of marks….independent school kids paying more, those receiving benefits paying least. But probably the Boards don’t want loads more requests…they struggle for reviewers, more re-grades looks bad and throws out their allocation of different grades. It’s disappointing that the system isn’t more reliable and that accessing what is rightfully their real mark is easier for some than others.