In the following article, I will be answering the 6 most common questions students ask me as an examiner. These are the six most common questions I have been asked.
- How are Maths exams marked?
- Am I a harsh or generous marker?
- My teacher says if I don't show working out, I will get zero marks, is this true?
- What will the grade boundaries be this year?
- What is the funniest response I have seen to a question?
- What happens when students appeal their grades?
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How are Maths exams marked?
I have been marking exams since 2005 and they have always been done online.
We all see a particular question from a students paper, for example Question 17 and we award that question a score 0,1, or 2 marks. Once we submit this, we get another students' question 17 response. We need to mark each question about 1000-2000 times. So by the end of it, we are experts at how students respond to a certain type of question.
I know that before I began marking, examiners would receive huge parcels with hundreds of exam papers and each examiner would mark a whole paper from start to finish. This is where some peoples exam scripts would go missing!
I prefer the current method as there is more consistency with 30 examiners marking one students work and exam scripts cannot go missing.
Am I a harsh or generous marker?
Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a harsh or generous marker in Maths. Every examiner needs to follow the mark scheme which is extremely concise and caters for almost every possible answer a student may have responded with. In the unlikely case, where a student enters something which is not mentioned in the mark scheme, we forward the question to the principal examiner and they will mark it and then update the mark scheme in necessary to include this response.
If 100 examiners marked the same 4 mark question, they should all reach he same total marks to award that student. There are verification checks in place to ensure that examiners are marking accurately.
My teacher says if I don't show working out, I will get zero marks, is this true?
This is not entirely true. For about 90 percent of the paper, the mark scheme stats "correct answer equals full marks." So as long as the answer is correct, we do not need to see where this came from.
The problem is when students make an error, if there is no working out, we award zero marks. So if there was a four mark question which required you to do some working out and end up doing 400+48=448.This is how many marks you would get in each situation (four marks).
- just writing 448 (no working) (4 marks)
- doing all the working out and getting 448 (4 marks)
- doing all the working out including 400+48 =484 (mixing up the final two digits) (3 marks)
- just writing 484 (no working) (0 Marks)
Your teachers will want you to show all you working because they want you get get 3 marks on the question in case you make an error (instead of zero). This is why it is important to show working out.
In a couple of months, I will be making a video titled "I got every question in the GCSE wrong and this is what Grade I got"
Hopefully this video will illustrate the importance of showing your working out.
Will the grade boundaries be high or low this year?
The truth is we do not know until all the exam papers are marked. Once we know everyone's total scores known as raw score. the mathematicians at the exam board work their maths and devise a formula to convert their raw score into a scaled score.
For example, about 3% of students should be awarded a Grade 9, so we need to identify what mark do we make the grade 9, so that about 3% of students will achieve a Grade 9, lets says this was 68/80, anyone who scores 68 or higher will be awarded a Grade 9.
Then do the same with Grade 8,7,6 and so on until we have a score for every grade. This is how grade boundaries are decided.
On a more personal note, I believe Grade boundaries will be slightly higher (students will need more marks) than previous years to grade the grade they need. If in previous years 65/80 was a Grade 9, I believe it could be 68/80 this year.
The main reason I believe this will happen is because students knew exactly what topics were expected to come on this years paper. Many people were able to predict the exact type of question to expect, I did this every day on Tiktok for the last two months.
What is the Funniest response I have seen to a question?
I am not allowed to talk about anything that I have marked this year.
However a few years ago a question asked students to give their answers the three significant figures. The student didn't know how to do this, so their response was, "Queen Victoria, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, these are three significant figures."
Students ask me if I gave the student a mark for making me laugh, as much as I wanted to, I couldn't do that.
What happens when Students appeal their Grades?
If you are not happy with your grade when the results arrive, students have the right to appeal them. It is important you check a few things before appealing them. How many marks are you from the next grade up and how many marks are you from the next grade down. This is because your grade can go down as well as up.
In a maths exam, because your paper will have been marked by 20-30 examiners, it is unlikely that you will gain many more marks. If you need more than three marks, I do not think it is worth appealing. If you were one mark away from the grade above, I would consider it as there is a small possibility that your grade could improve.
Are there any more questions you would ask an examiner, if so, let me know and I will update the article.
