I've just been looking at the examiner's reports from the 2003 and 2004 exams and I'm a bit confused. What is the difference between 'Raw Mark' and 'Scaled Mark'? Which one should I be looking at?
RAW mark never changes; its the mark which you need to have in order to get a certain grade... I think the scale mark changes (its what you get on the paper). So, if the paper was really hard, they would scale the scale mark higher to meet the RAW mark, its complicated but I think that's right.
Raw marks are the actual marks that you get in the exam, scale mark is where they put it to the most appropriate grade. For example. bob scored 78 in his economics exam in 2003 and got an A*, in 2004, jimbob scored 78 in his economics exam as well, but because jimbobs exam was slightly easier he only got an A. so 78 was the raw mark, and the boundary for the grades they got are scaled.
So if I knew for sure I got 40 marks out of 90 in my biology paper, do I look at the raw mark or the scale mark to predict what grade I would have got if I had taken the exam that year?
So if I knew for sure I got 40 marks out of 90 in my biology paper, do I look at the raw mark or the scale mark to predict what grade I would have got if I had taken the exam that year?
Unless there's details of how they convert raw to scale, or grade boundaries based on raw marks, use the scale marks.