The Student Room Group

Paranoia about examination marking!

This is a pretty urgent question about the marking process.

I keep having this paranoia and fear that my exam is going to be marked incredibly wrongly and that I am going to be given the completely wrong grade for all my grades.

This mainly started from when my English iGCSE grade from November was shockingly low for what I expected, and it turned out that there had been an error in our school database, meaning I had to do the resit.

And now this has infiltrated into my day-to-day thoughts.

So can anyone who has been through this kind of thing give me a heads up in how it all works, and how I can be ABSOLUTELY sure that it's not going to be marked incorrectly?

I have so little trust in everything at the moment that it's hard for me to be absolutely sure, so I need a great level of comfort that it always runs smoothly...

(When I say it has infiltrated into my daily life...I mean that I was literally sweating in the exam hall yesterday and I had to leave the room all because I was scared that the "8" in my candidate number looked like a "6".)
Reply 1
Original post by TeenPolyglot
This is a pretty urgent question about the marking process.

I keep having this paranoia and fear that my exam is going to be marked incredibly wrongly and that I am going to be given the completely wrong grade for all my grades.

This mainly started from when my English iGCSE grade from November was shockingly low for what I expected, and it turned out that there had been an error in our school database, meaning I had to do the resit.

And now this has infiltrated into my day-to-day thoughts.

So can anyone who has been through this kind of thing give me a heads up in how it all works, and how I can be ABSOLUTELY sure that it's not going to be marked incorrectly?

I have so little trust in everything at the moment that it's hard for me to be absolutely sure, so I need a great level of comfort that it always runs smoothly...

(When I say it has infiltrated into my daily life...I mean that I was literally sweating in the exam hall yesterday and I had to leave the room all because I was scared that the "8" in my candidate number looked like a "6".)


You can't be absolutely sure, because errors do happen. The markers are human, and it's possible that their 8's will look like 6's too.

Your exams officer will check the front page of each exam. So if you make errors in the identifying information (like candidate number) or if it's not readable, they will pick up on this. You'll then be called to correct it if it's something you need to correct, or they will just correct it if they can. So you really don't need to worry about that - although it's best to get it right if you can.


Last year, there was a huge fuss because 90,000 grades were changed across A Level and GCSE qualifications. But 572,000 people applied for a re-mark, and there were 2.1 million candidates. So one person in your class will have one exam marked incorrectly. It's not that huge if you think about it.
Original post by Juno
You can't be absolutely sure, because errors do happen. The markers are human, and it's possible that their 8's will look like 6's too.

Your exams officer will check the front page of each exam. So if you make errors in the identifying information (like candidate number) or if it's not readable, they will pick up on this. You'll then be called to correct it if it's something you need to correct, or they will just correct it if they can. So you really don't need to worry about that - although it's best to get it right if you can.


Last year, there was a huge fuss because 90,000 grades were changed across A Level and GCSE qualifications. But 572,000 people applied for a re-mark, and there were 2.1 million candidates. So one person in your class will have one exam marked incorrectly. It's not that huge if you think about it.


OK, so in all honesty, there will be mistakes but they're nothing to worry about?

What about in exams like English, where my writing is legible to some people but not to others, due to the pickup in speed near the end? What happens then if they simply have trouble reading the writing?
Reply 3
Original post by TeenPolyglot
OK, so in all honesty, there will be mistakes but they're nothing to worry about?

What about in exams like English, where my writing is legible to some people but not to others, due to the pickup in speed near the end? What happens then if they simply have trouble reading the writing?

You might lose SPAG marks, because if it isn't legible they will struggle to tell if it's spelt and punctuated correctly. But that's not many marks overall.

If one marker can't read it they will flag it, and another marker will have a go. As long as it's obvious it isn't just scribbles they will keep trying to read it until they find someone who can
Original post by TeenPolyglot
This is a pretty urgent question about the marking process.

I keep having this paranoia and fear that my exam is going to be marked incredibly wrongly and that I am going to be given the completely wrong grade for all my grades.

This mainly started from when my English iGCSE grade from November was shockingly low for what I expected, and it turned out that there had been an error in our school database, meaning I had to do the resit.

And now this has infiltrated into my day-to-day thoughts.

So can anyone who has been through this kind of thing give me a heads up in how it all works, and how I can be ABSOLUTELY sure that it's not going to be marked incorrectly?

I have so little trust in everything at the moment that it's hard for me to be absolutely sure, so I need a great level of comfort that it always runs smoothly...

(When I say it has infiltrated into my daily life...I mean that I was literally sweating in the exam hall yesterday and I had to leave the room all because I was scared that the "8" in my candidate number looked like a "6".)

There is a video on YouTube about how Edexcel mark their GCSE scripts, and I feel like it's quite thorough. However, I do feel the same as you sometimes, I don't want to be someone who opens their results and gets really unexpected grades maybe because of a harsh examiner or maybe just an error on the grade sheet or whatever :s-smilie:
Original post by Juno
You might lose SPAG marks, because if it isn't legible they will struggle to tell if it's spelt and punctuated correctly. But that's not many marks overall.

If one marker can't read it they will flag it, and another marker will have a go. As long as it's obvious it isn't just scribbles they will keep trying to read it until they find someone who can


OK cool, thanks!

Quick Reply