[Me123456789]

They are not fair!
One reason is because of the examiners and the way they mark, but also because there are so many different exam boards, I think there should just be one for every subject.

[farrukhkhan01]

I think examiners love curry

[. . .]

(Original post by Lollyage)
I've seen papers go up from Ds to As, and it's just unacceptable. Quite frankly, as harsh as it is, I don't give a **** if an examiner has had a hard day of marking papers, a candidate puts so many weeks if not months worth of hard work into that one paper, if an examiner doesn't mark something correctly (on say, more than 2 known occasions) they should lose their job. So many people's futures are in their hands, they can't just get it wrong.

Examiners make mistakes. Examiners are human.

[. . .]

Everybody ignores the fact that the chances of their papers being marked to generously is the same as it being marked harshly.
In fact some of you may have even benefited from the examiners feeling slightly more generous.

If you want to make a judgment about something at least have the decency to analyse both sides of the argument.

[Tateco]

(Original post by iamkeeley)
We all know that examiners are only human and are likely to make mistakes. In written essay exams such as Geography, English, Sociology etc. you are given marks based on the examiners opinion.

For example you could write an essay and get 27/33 while somebody else, who's essay wasn't 'as good', may have got 30/33. I know it's only 3 marks but those marks could be the difference between an A and a B!

Does anybody agree that this can be frustrating? An examiner could even be having a bad day after marking 50+ papers so they knock you down a few marks

Yes, I completely agree.

[. . .]

(Original post by iamkeeley)
We all know that examiners are only human and are likely to make mistakes. In written essay exams such as Geography, English, Sociology etc. you are given marks based on the examiners opinion.

For example you could write an essay and get 27/33 while somebody else, who's essay wasn't 'as good', may have got 30/33. I know it's only 3 marks but those marks could be the difference between an A and a B!

Does anybody agree that this can be frustrating? An examiner could even be having a bad day after marking 50+ papers so they knock you down a few marks

I only do one essay subject so I can only speak for that. In economics marks are given on analysis and evaluation.

Doesn't matter what your final conclusion is as long as you have put forward a strong case looked at the flaws and come to a valid conclusion you will get the marks.

Also examiners are under so much pressure it is unbelievable. In economics A2 the whole paper consists of 2 essays and several long answers. They have about 3 weeks to mark 600 papers. And the mark scheme is very very vague so that adds to the trouble.

I just see this as a large scapegoat that people use if they don't get the grades they want.

[dippers]

Did you hear about the OCR exam board, who incorrectly marked hundreds of papers at a lower grades than they should have been. One of the workers found out that papers were being marked but the board wouldn't do anything so he personally sent out letters to each school, and he got fired!

[A.J10]

(Original post by overskrill)
I completely agree. I was getting straight As in English essays, then I pissed my teacher off a little and suddenly I was getting Ds in every essay. After making up with her, I started getting As again. They're only human so these factors will affect your grades, I'm capable of As/A*s in English Language and Literature but I'm afraid I may only get Bs now because of this.

I remember my English teacher did the same to a lot of our class. She was suspended for a few months after our results came out though

Another example, on my computing coursework everyone in my class did it, got a mark, made improvements and got it marked by a different teacher. A lot of people apparently stayed the same, some even lost marks with one person having theirs halved. All comes down to who marks it.

This was posted from The Student Room's Android App on my E15i

[singh224]

After last thursday I really hate exam... had 2 really important exam Core 4 and FP3 but I had a really bad hay fever and kept sneezing through the exam wasn't even able to finish the paper and I have prepared really well for it. Might have to take a gap year now!!!!!!

[Bukhatir]

exams are there to tell between a hardworking and a lazy student. tests are NEVER hard it's YOUR INTELLECT that's lazy.

[Formerly Helpful_C]

(Original post by iamkeeley)
We all know that examiners are only human and are likely to make mistakes. In written essay exams such as Geography, English, Sociology etc. you are given marks based on the examiners opinion.

For example you could write an essay and get 27/33 while somebody else, who's essay wasn't 'as good', may have got 30/33. I know it's only 3 marks but those marks could be the difference between an A and a B!

Does anybody agree that this can be frustrating? An examiner could even be having a bad day after marking 50+ papers so they knock you down a few marks

Wrong use of 'whose' = deduction of marks.

[TheDefiniteArticle]

Clearly, exams as they are currently run are unacceptably poor, but as a premise they seem to be a good way of moderating achievement, not to mention helping the students themselves guage their abilities and thus decide where in society they should fall. We would see far fewer problems if each paper needed to be marked by two separate examiners first time around.

[JessicaAP]

(Original post by TheDefiniteArticle)
Clearly, exams as they are currently run are unacceptably poor, but as a premise they seem to be a good way of moderating achievement, not to mention helping the students themselves guage their abilities and thus decide where in society they should fall. We would see far fewer problems if each paper needed to be marked by two separate examiners first time around.

I do agree. However, I think that whilst exams are a good way of testing your ability and skills, there is too much weighting on them overall. I think essays/coursework should make up at least half of your overall result, as then your final result would be representative of all the work you've done over the whole year. As it currently stands, you're judged on a couple of hours writing under horribly pressured conditions. I guess I'm mostly talking about essay-based subjects, like English, politics etc.

[Dalek1099]

The solution is so obvious but the exam boards are obviously too lazy,external standardisation there is internal standardisation then why not external standardisation-it might take longer to get the results back but they would at least be right.

[Data]

(Original post by Dalek1099)
The solution is so obvious but the exam boards are obviously too lazy,external standardisation there is internal standardisation then why not external standardisation-it might take longer to get the results back but they would at least be right.

Could you elaborate on what you mean? Do you mean moderation or standardisation? I'm not sure whether you are talking about the marking of coursework or exams but why would this ensure that the results were right when internal standardisation does not? (There is a fair bit of discussion on % passing each subject between the exam boards before the results come out already).

p.s. Have you considered getting rid of your intensely annoying massive font comment about SPAG? It irritates me every time I see it as it fills the page up with your hang ups and get sin the way of the thread.

[Dalek1099]

(Original post by Data)
Could you elaborate on what you mean? Do you mean moderation or standardisation? I'm not sure whether you are talking about the marking of coursework or exams but why would this ensure that the results were right when internal standardisation does not? (There is a fair bit of discussion on % passing each subject between the exam boards before the results come out already).

p.s. Have you considered getting rid of your intensely annoying massive font comment about SPAG? It irritates me every time I see it as it fills the page up with your hang ups and get sin the way of the thread.

I meant exams,if more than one person marks it it is more likely to be correctly marked and I want them to be marked in the same way as coursework.For example,some said one here an examiner missed a page,two examiners wouldn't have.

[samir12]

(Original post by . . .)
I only do one essay subject so I can only speak for that. In economics marks are given on analysis and evaluation.

Doesn't matter what your final conclusion is as long as you have put forward a strong case looked at the flaws and come to a valid conclusion you will get the marks.

Also examiners are under so much pressure it is unbelievable. In economics A2 the whole paper consists of 2 essays and several long answers. They have about 3 weeks to mark 600 papers. And the mark scheme is very very vague so that adds to the trouble.

I just see this as a large scapegoat that people use if they don't get the grades they want.

For essay based exams its going to be subjective, so examiners will have different opinions on whether to award marks for a particular point or not, there isnt a set standard which we should all accept. But when it comes to students going from D's to A's after a remark, there is something wrong there, there shouldnt be such a big distinction from one examiners marking to another examiners marking, it does make it unfair on some students. Yes examiners are human, but you cannot use that excuse in your job, you make terrible mistakes you'll just get fired !

[Data]

(Original post by Dalek1099)
I meant exams,if more than one person marks it it is more likely to be correctly marked and I want them to be marked in the same way as coursework.For example,some said one here an examiner missed a page,two examiners wouldn't have.

Quite a few papers are marked twice (and just occasionally 3 times) - you can tell if you get the original/photocopy back because you can see the 2 sets of handwriting and marks. There is an established hierarchy of examiners, senior examiners etc that sample other examiners' work. Sadly, it doesn't catch all the mistakes but I don't think doing it 'externally' would either.

p.s. Thanks for getting rid of the big font rant.

[vedderfan94]

Science subjects are pretty fair I reckon (I do maths, physics and chemistry) but yeah I agree about essays and how much they can jump up or drop down in marks after a remark.

[Dalek1099]

(Original post by Data)
Quite a few papers are marked twice (and just occasionally 3 times) - you can tell if you get the original/photocopy back because you can see the 2 sets of handwriting and marks. There is an established hierarchy of examiners, senior examiners etc that sample other examiners' work. Sadly, it doesn't catch all the mistakes but I don't think doing it 'externally' would either.

p.s. Thanks for getting rid of the big font rant.

I haven't got rid of the big font rant-remember it only appears at the top of each page.