SATs marking

[Caaarrrl]

I'm considering applying to be a SATs marker for the first time. Just got a few questions if anyone can help please.

Is it financially worth it?

Which subject is best?

Is the training day only held in London? Does capita pay for travel, hotel, food etc for training day?

Any other advice or things that I should think about before deciding?

Thanks everyone

Did it for years - dropped doing it a couple of years ago as they’d really got shitty about how they treated markers in terms of how they spoke to us on the training days and the deadlines had become ridiculous - plus I hated the change to on-screen marking an endless stream of Question 3s versus marking the whole script for a school.

Financially - it used to be worth it, by the time I stopped I didn’t think it was as they’d made the deadlines so tight it was just ridiculous - and the IT system behind the marking was bloody attrocious (I think it was running on a ZX Spectrum powered by a geriatric hamster in a wheel) and it would slow to a grinding halt when everyone logged on to try to do some marking meaning it was taking up to 15 minutes to load a response clip. Disclaimer of course: they may have upgraded the hamster in the last few years.

I did English - can’t speak for Maths at all.

Training days - I’m in the East Midlands and over the years I’ve been to Sheffield, Leeds, Nottingham and Birmingham - if train times didn’t match up or the distances were getting stupid they’d fund a hotel overnight, and the food during the training day was always provided (and nice).

Basically it is incredibly flat out during the marking period - which I always found fine as it coincided with supply starting to fall off for the summer - but I just found it was getting worse and worse each year which is when I threw in the towel with it.

Thanks for replying. I'm undecided about applying. Then I think that I could try it this year and not do it again if I'm not happy with it.