Past paper marking options?

[hnk123]

DS has started revising seriously for his A levels, taking History, Maths and English Lit. His teachers say he’s doing well and he’s predicted A*AA after a good set of mocks, but he’s not confident completing past papers and marking them by himself. He’s not sure how to interpret the mark schemes when it comes to marking them and he says his teachers don’t have time to give him the level of detail he wants in his feedback.

Does anyone know if there’s a way you can get papers/essays marked by teachers or even examiners? He’s keen not to get a tutor but if that’s the best option we’ll do that just for the marking.

All recommendations welcome!

A good tutor with exam experience would be able to mark them and feed back. I think that’s your best option. I tutor (not those subjects! Not touting!) and I have done this before. You’ll have to pay tho obviously. How much depends on how long it takes to mark I guess.

@clary Thanks for the reply! Do you know roughly how much this might cost? For example, for a full English Lit or Maths paper?

Is this just to mark it or to set one as well? Assuming you are using the available past papers... (not that there are loads) I charge £35 an hour for A level work so I guess it would depend how long it took. Marking just the written element of an A level for MFL (my subject) would take me maybe 30-45mins.

Maths might take less time (apologies to any maths tutors if I am wrong) and English I imagine longer, judging by the marking loads of English teachers I know.

If the tutor knew the paper well they could perhaps mark it in less time, and of course tutors’ rates will vary. I know some A level tutors charge up to £60 ph or more. Some tutors charge less. Depends on demand I guess. Also someone might charge less for marking than for a lesson as there is not the same amount of prep. But I would say at least £20 at the bottom end for maths and maybe a good deal more, especially for English. Is that more or less what you were expecting?

I should add that it might depend on the texts. If someone wanted me to mark their A level essay on Heine's poetry I'd take longer than if it were a more commonly chosen text (that I have taught and marked before). The same would presumably apply fir Eng lit.

Agree that a tutor would be the best option here. Even if you literally just hire them to mark the papers and talk him through them.

Teachers are right, they really don't have the time to give each student detailed feedback. They're just expected to do too much, so something has to give.

@ManchesterLu yes I agree, I definitely wouldn’t expect them to give feedback at the level DS wants, he’s tried things like AI graders but I think an actual teacher or tutor would give him the best kind of feedback. I’ll enquire with a few tutors and see what they say.

In case anyone is searching/was interested DS tried out a website called Mark My Essay for a couple of past papers and he seems happy so far! He was insistent he didn't want a tutor at all🙄so we'll see how it goes!

Good that you have found a solution. I am not familiar with this website but I presume it offers marking to a specific mark scheme (qualification level, subject and specific board)? Looks at a quick glance as though you supply the mark scheme, so that should be what they do. Best of luck to him, hope it is useful.