Any AQA GCSE science examiners out there?

[lilyathena]

Who might be able to tell me what 'blue stars' mean on a marked GCSE script please? DD has extended several of his answers onto extra sheets. Blue stars are marked on some of the first part answers so I am assuming it means 'we have seen this and the overall mark is given next to the final paragraph which is written on an extra sheet'. However some of her initial answers aren't starred and the mark on the extra sheet looks very low. I'm wondering if the extra sheets and initial answers weren't actually joined together by the marker/exam board when marking digitally.

I’m not but can you deduce the answer yourself by looking at one of the split answers? Or by totting up the marks yourself. It may be possible to get hold of the mark scheme.

Thankyou. Yes I've got all that but it's not totally clear. Two of his 'half' answers have these blue stars and one doesn't. I'm not sure if the one has 'not been seen' or didn't have anything worth crediting, so just wondering what the star code means.

The stars go next to creditable points but generally aren’t used in all questions. It’s not one star equals a mark though, so don’t try to add them up. It’s quite common for the kids to waffle on for ages and not write anything creditable, then have a couple of stars towards the end of a response

Oh, and for AQA it’s impossible to input a mark for a question without scrolling to see the additional material. You can’t click to submit the mark until you’ve looked at all the extra bits.

Yep, the stars are optional and used by the examiners where they see points that may be creditworthy on extended response questions. You often need specific parts in your answer to move between levels, for example if planning experiments then if you miss out control variables, or repeats, then the experiment would not be valid and that would restrict the maximum mark you can get, regardless of the rest of the answer.
Also agree, you cannot move onto the next response until you have read all of a candidate’s answer including that on extra pages.