Can you question the 'Review of Marking'?

[itsnotaremark]

OCR Geography. DD used the extra space at the back to continue her answers. On both Papers 1 & 2 there appeared to be a question where the extended answer at the back had not been marked (no annotations/comments etc.). All other extended answer questions had annotations.

We submitted them both for review. One paper came back acknowledging that the extended answer appeared to have been missed and awarded DD an extra mark.

The other paper came back unchanged. Fine. But this morning we received the reviewed paper and that page is still totally untouched - no annotations even though the rest of the paper is covered with them? Could this have been missed twice?! I did consider maybe there was nothing in the extra bit to award marks but Chat GPT begs to differ and I would still expect some annotation to show it had been seen given the extensive amount of annotation on the rest of the paper?

I know you can appeal but from what I understand that is appealing the process? Would this fall under that? What can we do to check if it definitely has been seen? Does anyone know or has anyone successfully appealed a review?

You would need to appeal and the school can advise you how and on what grounds.

It's not my board or paper but when I do reviews, I am not allowed to annotate except in very specific circumstances, which would not include this one. I would be expected to comment that I had seen the additional pages but nothing more, and if there was nothing additional to credit, I wouldn't even have to do that.

Agree with Mrs Hamlet
You can appeal but the lack of annotations does not mean the extra paper hasn’t been seen, in fact our software doesn’t even allow to click through until you have a) acknowledged the existence of extra material and b) used your cursor to actually see it all.
Reviewers are a selected subset of senior examiners so they are all fully aware of all potential issues and challenges.

Thank you both for your responses - it is helpful to know. I did a bit of digging and according to OCR reviewer guidelines, 'markers and reviewers must apply at least one validation annotation (such as a tick, cross, or specific mark scheme symbol) to every single page containing candidate text'.

The examiner had even marked 'seen' on a blank page (again as required by their guidelines). So it does seem weird that a whole page of text has absolutely nothing on it? It looks even more odd given the extensive annotation on all the other pages. So it really does appear to have been missed but I just don't get how it can be missed twice?? Or how it would have bypassed the 'submission block' also mentioned in their guidelines? There is a small red paperclip looking symbol on all the attached Extra Answer Pages - I wonder if this small annotation gets it past the submission block? To add, this symbol was also evident on Paper 1 but that reviewer noted that there was an administrative error and that although the addition page was linked, there were no annotations to show the extra work had been marked, and they went on to mark it and awarded a further mark.

DD emailed the exam officer and popped by to see her - she agreed it looks strange and will query it with OCR (DD said the EO said something about being able to query it before going to an official appeal?). So we'll wait and see and keep everything crossed that this page has 1 mark on it given DD is only 1 mark away from the higher boundary.

Electronic Marking (via RM Assessor)

• Active Responses: Markers and reviewers must apply at least one validation annotation (such as a tick, cross, or specific mark scheme symbol) to every single page containing candidate text. 1, 2]
• Blank or Additional Pages: For any extra blank pages or unlinked sheets attached to the script, the examiner must explicitly use the "Flag as seen" or "Seen" tool.
• 1]
• Submission Block: The electronic system (RM Assessor) will actively prevent an examiner or reviewer from submitting a completed script if any page has been left

If it has missed twice it sounds like a scanning issue. I can only see pages tagged to a paper - I can see the whole script as well as the question I mark or review, but if the scanning hasn't flagged it as belonging to that paper, I won't see it at all.

It's certainly a mystery.

I’m a senior examiner who reviews papers and I physically cannot submit a script on RM unless I’ve flagged every page as ‘Seen’, which stamps a little ‘Seen’ annotation on it. This sounds very odd if that page has no annotation on it at all - RM wouldn’t have let it be submitted.

I have also marked for OCR in the past and the minimum requirement is for the "seen" annotation to be entered on the extra pages. There is usually a warning for examiners that the script contains extra sheets of paper before you even start marking.

Have you checked the marks entered on this question before the extra sheet was used. For example if it was a 6 mark question, do the annotations for this question ticks, crosses and carrots i.e. the following symbol with the arrow going upwards > add up to the maximum number of marks?

My understanding is that extra sheets are scanned in and then added manually to the marking system.
What you are describing is that perhaps this process wasn't done correctly.