Marking and moderation
How GCSEs, AS and A levels are marked and moderated.
Ofqual requires exam boards to make sure all assessors, including teachers who are marking their own students’ work, understand how they must mark, and that marking is done accurately and to a consistent standard.
Where teachers mark their own students’ work (an ‘internally marked’ assessment), then exam boards must moderate that marking. This is so they can make sure marking has been undertaken accurately and consistently across all schools and colleges. Schools and colleges should standardise marking between teachers within their centre.
All exams are marked by markers who are recruited and paid by the exam boards.
Non-exam assessment can be marked in different ways, for example by teachers in the student’s school or college or by visiting examiners. In some cases, it is sent to the exam board for marking.
JCQ has confirmed that schools and colleges should mark all non-exam assessment using the published mark schemes, as before the pandemic disruption. Schools and colleges must not try to account for disruption that learners have experienced by marking more leniently. Exam boards will moderate all non-exam assessment in the usual way this year.
A school or college should have specific arrangements in place for students to request reviews of the marking of internal assessments.
JCQ has published information about the processes schools and colleges need to put in place.
Exam boards meet our rules - including making sure marking is as accurate as possible - in different ways. Their approach can depend on whether scripts are marked on paper or electronically (on-screen), as well as whether they are marked by question or as a whole paper. Exam board approaches include:
- ‘seed’ items – Where on screen marking is used, after the exam has taken place and before the marking starts, senior examiners review student responses and select a number of ‘seed’ items. They then agree a definitive mark – the mark that the response will get and that they all agree is the most appropriate – for each of these seed items and agree a marking tolerance. If a marker awards a mark for a seed item which is outside the agreed tolerance, they can be stopped from marking (either until they have completed further training, or permanently). The marking they have already completed might also be remarked or adjusted
- requiring markers to submit samples of their marking to a more senior marker for checking. Again, if a marker is not marking to the required standard, they can be stopped from marking - either until they have completed further training, or permanently. And the marking they have already completed might be remarked or adjusted
A school or college that wants to understand how a particular exam board quality assures its marking should look on their website for information or contact them directly.
Teachers mark non-exam assessments that are used for some subjects. When they do this, exam boards must moderate the teachers’ marking to make sure that it is accurate and consistent. This is normally done, at least initially, by checking a sample of the marking of each school or college to see if their marking is in line with national standards.
To make this possible, every school or college must provide a sample of their students’ work. The sample is set by the exam boards to include a sufficient number and range of student work (given different marks) to allow them to make a secure judgement about the standard of the school or college’s marking.
The sample is scrutinised by the exam board’s moderator. The moderator, who must have been trained by the exam board to carry out moderation, reviews the marking of the work to check that the mark scheme has been applied accurately (to the correct standard) and consistently.
If the moderator largely agrees with the marks, then the centre’s marks remain, and they are used to calculate the final qualification grades for the centre’s students.
In making this judgement, exam boards recognise that there may be some small differences between the marks given by the teacher and those given by the moderator that do not indicate that the school made errors in its marking. There may be legitimate differences in judgement between the school or college marker and the moderator about the exact mark they judge a piece of work should receive. Reflecting this, exam boards normally choose to put in place a small ‘tolerance’ between the marks the school or college give, and the moderator thought appropriate. It is only where the exam board finds that the difference between the marking of a school or college, and that of the moderator, is greater than the tolerance that they will judge the marking to be inaccurate.
If the moderator finds that the marking is inaccurate and/or inconsistent (for example, some marks are accurate and others are not), or they cannot make a judgement about this from the sample they have reviewed, the exam board must act to address this. To do this, a number of things might happen:
- if the moderator is not sure, from the sample that they have looked at, if the marking is accurate or consistent, the moderator will look at a wider sample of work from that school or college to allow them to come to a judgement
- if the moderator identifies that the marking is inaccurate but that it is consistent – for example, if the marks are consistently too low or too high – the exam board will adjust the original marking to make sure students receive an accurate mark. Such an adjustment is applied to the work of all the students in the school, not just those in the sample. The moderator will have looked at a sufficiently wide sample of work to establish a consistent level of marking within the centre
- if the moderator finds that the marking is inconsistent, so that it is impossible to adjust the marks in a way that ensures students receive accurate marks, the exam board will either:
- request and then remark all the work from the school or college, or
- ask the school or college to mark it again and then look again at the new marks given through the moderation process
The moderator will also prepare a report for the school or college, which gives feedback on their marking. This report should allow the school or college to understand the reasons for any changes to their marking, made following moderation. In particular, this could help the school or college to have confidence in how they mark non-exam assessment in the future and/or identify any areas for improvement and, should it be necessary, help them decide whether to seek a review of any adjustment to the marks made after moderation.