Secondary teachers - exam boards

[qwerty098766]

Hi all,

Can I ask you to give me a picture of how this works in your subjects?

I teach an Arts subject, which is obviously subjective in its marking.

I have this year (again) fallen foul of IMO terribly inconsistent marking in one component. The marks this year bare no resemblance to the same type of students work the year before.

My subject specific forums are rife with irate and understandably upset teachers who cannot fathom the marks given. Students getting As in one component and Ds and Es in others.

Obviously, if you get the grades or do better you're less likely to post, so I realise the activity of the last couple of days doesn't paint the whole picture.

So - my question is, is this common amongst all subjects? Do you question the examiners and moderators ability to mark/consistency/level of training? Are grades often wildly different from what you expect? Or are you fairly confident in your predicted grades?

How much do you go into results day with your hopes placed firmly in the hands of the students having performed well on the day? Or are you actively praying the exam board have been kind/fair/correct?

for everyone getting results...

Didn't seem to be an issue this year in my arts/media subject but certainly has been in the past. I think examiners in more minority subjects like mine can expect too much sometimes.

I think the subject that is notorious for this is history?

I teach history and am a bit baffled by some of the marking this year. There seems to be real inconsistency between the units and my coursework was moderated down this year despite having had no issues for the last two years with the same spec. I marked the same way as I did last year and the year before but this year we had a different moderator and our marks were taken down. I’d already got a sense from an exam board event that I’d gone to in July that the board was now putting more emphasis on provenance and less on the analysis of historians interpretations. I’d got the distinct impression then that the best-fit approach I’d used (where I rewarded quite highly for good analysis and a critique of the argument put forward and only taking of a mark of two if they hadn’t done provenance very well) might be an issue. They showed us some pieces that got very high marks with almost no analysis of the argument and no direct critique of the viewpoint put forward but good provenance and I realised then that that particular bit of the mark scheme is what seemed to be determining the level this year. I wish they would just underline or put in bold the bit of the mark scheme that is definitive or gave an indication in the marking instructions if one strand has greater weight than the others. It would save everyone, including the board, a fair bit of angst.

Same sort of problems in English Lit. In markschemes and CPD, they witter on about 'holistic' marking and 'best fit' and then moderators focus on saying particular AOs are overmarked!

We are also told in both subjects I teach not to spout theorists' names and then the examiner's report does it...

I teach Music and from reading other forums, it seems that some exam boards have more form for this than others. Composition seems to be a particular issue where teachers and moderators differ wildly. As a result, in its previous incarnation, I would always advise students to complete technical studies where there is more scope for objective marking as opposed to the wholly subjective original compositions.

I have not taught the new A level that our year 13s sat this year as I am p/t 2nd in the dept. so I haven't seen the marks, but as my daughter's friends took the subject, I have seen a couple of overall marks and they are disappointing. Our year 12s and the incoming cohort are using a different exam board. We used this one for GCSE and the first set last year had no changes made whatsoever. The subject officer is very proactive and keeps reminding teachers to adhere to the mark scheme and their students' marks should not differ wildly. Now waiting for next Thursday...!