Exam board chief Andrew Hall Q&A session: Thursday 25 July at 3.30pm

It’s similar to the cost of sitting an exam first time around - we have to pay the examiners who mark the papers and there are a number of logistical costs too (for example getting the script to the examiner and back to us).

On your second question, probably a lot longer than you might think! So from start to finish, with all the checking that has to take place, probably about a year.

This is a really important issue in assessment, so I'm going to give you quite a long answer but I hope it's helpful.

It is certainly true that there is some subjectivity in the marking of essay-based subjects and, if you gave two highly experienced examiners an essay, there is a strong possibility that they wouldn’t both give it exactly the same mark. That is because you mark essays using professional judgement about the quality of those essays, rather than giving individual marks for right/wrong answers. It means that two students who have very different 'takes' on a question can both be given credit, which is as it should be.

To ensure fairness to students, we train our examiners very carefully and monitor their marking, so that we minimise, as far as possible, the differences in their individual professional judgements. Every examiner has a mark scheme, which has been developed by our highly experienced senior examiners, with support from our researchers, who are internationally recognised experts in marking. The mark scheme describes the qualities of essays, from the excellent to the very weak. So an excellent essay will display strong subject knowledge, combined with detailed analysis and well-founded evaluation; a weaker essay might display some knowledge and attempts at analysis, but possibly very little, if any, evaluation.

But a mark scheme alone is not sufficient to ensure high quality marking. Examiners need to be trained to use that mark scheme – this is called standardisation. They are given examples of a range of essays, with the marks which they have been given and the reasons why. They then mark some essays themselves and their marking is checked by the senior examiners. During the marking, if they come across an essay which they are struggling to mark, they can ask for help and advice.

We cannot expect each examiner to give exactly the same mark to an essay as the senior examiner has given, but they should give a mark which is very close – we call that being 'within tolerance'. We do not let examiners mark who cannot mark consistently and within tolerance and we monitor their marking, by taking samples and checking. If the senior examiner spots a problem, he or she will contact the examiner and put them back on track. That examiner will be monitored carefully and, if they can’t mark consistently, they will be stopped from marking and someone else will re-mark their papers.

So you have to remember that, when you look at just the mark scheme, you are seeing just one part of a much bigger process which involves training, standardisation and ongoing monitoring. It is all the elements of the process, put together, which ensure the quality of our marking.

So, yes, I am confident that the marking of essays is sufficiently robust to use in 'high stakes' examinations like GCSEs and A-levels. That isn’t to say that things don’t occasionally go wrong. They sometimes do and I'm not sure you can entirely prevent that in a system which does involve judgement and human beings. Where things have gone wrong, teachers and students flag that up to us and we have procedures in place to ensure that, if there is a problem with the marking, that is addressed.

Hopefully it will also reassure you to know that right now we have people standing by ready to deal with individual queries that arise on A-level results day. We set ourselves really tough targets for resolving swiftly any queries to do with a university place.

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We think it's really important that students have support on hand when they get their results - someone they can talk to if things haven't turned out as well as they had expected. Also, from what I saw when this was introduced in Scotland, it wasn't trouble free...

I hope you found this Q&A useful and thanks for some great questions. I am very tempted to stay and answer some more, but - and this is absolutely true - I need to get on with agreeing where the grade boundaries for Maths A-level should be!

Best wishes and good luck with your results

Andrew

Why is AQA often seen as an inferior exam board when compared to OCR?

I've taught four different A Levels. OCR in my experience has always been easier, AQA AS topics offered at A2 OCR and such like.

OCR Maths and Physics are much harder.

Hi Sir. Sorry for messaging you so late. My question to you is that in my gcse exams I had used extra paper but on the extra paper I didn't answer the questions in the correct order. For example I answered q4 on the extra paper before q1 on the extra paper. Will this have any impact on the marking of my paper ? I would greatly appreciate it if you could answer my question . Thank you

Hi Sir. Sorry for messaging you so late. My question to you is that in my gcse exams I had used extra paper but on the extra paper I didn't answer the questions in the correct order. For example I answered q4 on the extra paper before q1 on the extra paper. Will this have any impact on the marking of my paper ? I would greatly appreciate it if you could answer my question . Thank you

I hope you found this Q&A useful and thanks for some great questions. I am very tempted to stay and answer some more, but - and this is absolutely true - I need to get on with agreeing where the grade boundaries for Maths A-level should be!

Best wishes and good luck with your results

Andrew