Is exam marking fair? Have your say

Is there no other people in your year who take exams in a separate room? There's loads in mine for various reasons like extra time, rest breaks ect

As a student who has finished A levels and had 2 papers remarked for AQA chemistry, BOTH of which increased in raw marks, resulting in changes to module grades and an overall award grade from a B to an A, I can say that I'm highly dissatisfied with the accuracy of marking.
Having achieved A*AB on results day, I didn't get the A I needed to take a gap year and apply to study medicine, so I accepted my offer to study biological sciences. However after noticing I was only a couple of UMS off an A in chemistry, I submitted for remarks for 2 of my modules. This meant I was prepared to go to university until early September when I received the results of my remarks. This meant I abandoned all my university plans to take a gap year and apply for the course I am desperate to study.
If marking had been accurate originally, I would have been awarded A*AA on results day, and I would have been able to prepare for a gap year and my application for 2017 entry at a much earlier date and I wouldn't have lost my £250 accommodation deposit!
I would be somewhat more sympathetic to the markers at AQA if the subject had been essay based, where answers can be viewed in an arguably more subjective manner such as English or History, however in Chemistry the majority of answers are either correct or incorrect.
You may think this is an overreaction, but this is people's hopes and dreams you are affecting by sloppy marking. What if my parents hadn't had the disposable income to pay £100+ for these remarks? I achieved an A, but I never would have known and this would have affected not only my degree, but the rest of my life.
What are you going to do to rectify this clearly significant issue in the future?

I should have send my Biology papers for remark as I was a couple UMS off from A* but I am too scared that my marks will go down and I don't think my parent is willing to pay for my remark. I decided to take a gap year to reapply for medicine on A Level result day, so I didn't really have any plan for my gap year. Where have you applied?

Well to be honest, there is only one or two medical schools that require an A* in bio/chem so it may not have been worth it! Also my best friend just missed an A in chemistry and got remarks and hers went down by 10 marks and she almost went down to a C overall! It's a big risk if you don't need it.
I didn't have any plans for my gap year either because of the circumstances but I've found some things to do now which I'm enjoying. I've applied to Birmingham, Leicester, Southampton and Sheffield, with my 5th choice as Medical Physiology at Leicester. What about you? What are your stats?

I've seen a lot of comments around the new process for remarks that is supposed to result in fewer successful changes. despite reading lots about it I have to confess I don't feel I understand it. I don't think I'm stupid but can they explain again the rationale and operation of the new process.

Compared to how many papers are sat each year, how many remarks are requested each year? Does it vary by subject? What proportion are successful and lead to change of grade? Does this vary by subject?
What proportion of successful remarks are small changes for people close to the next boundary compared to dramatic changes due to a serious marking problem?

How is the price of a remark decided, why is it different for different examiners and why is the refund process different for different examiners?

How do really bad marking errors get through the training, checking and review processes? What really happens to a marker who gets things badly wrong?

What would be the cost of having every paper marked independently twice compared to the current system?

I see a lot of usually wrong or overly simplified explanations of how grade boundaries are set to maintain standards over time. Can they explain how it's really done?

In 2014, I had my AQA Further Maths MFP2 remarked after needing only 1UMS more in that paper to get an A* overall. After recalling my script, I found a one mark question completely unmarked that I had got right which was all I needed.

My mark went up 2UMS (1 raw) as expected and I got the A*.

I think it's totally unacceptable how errors like these can be made when our grades, universities and therefore our lives depend on the competence of the markers...

As a student who has finished A levels and had 2 papers remarked for AQA chemistry, BOTH of which increased in raw marks, resulting in changes to module grades and an overall award grade from a B to an A, I can say that I'm highly dissatisfied with the accuracy of marking.
Having achieved A*AB on results day, I didn't get the A I needed to take a gap year and apply to study medicine, so I accepted my offer to study biological sciences. However after noticing I was only a couple of UMS off an A in chemistry, I submitted for remarks for 2 of my modules. This meant I was prepared to go to university until early September when I received the results of my remarks. This meant I abandoned all my university plans to take a gap year and apply for the course I am desperate to study.
If marking had been accurate originally, I would have been awarded A*AA on results day, and I would have been able to prepare for a gap year and my application for 2017 entry at a much earlier date and I wouldn't have lost my £250 accommodation deposit!
I would be somewhat more sympathetic to the markers at AQA if the subject had been essay based, where answers can be viewed in an arguably more subjective manner such as English or History, however in Chemistry the majority of answers are either correct or incorrect.
You may think this is an overreaction, but this is people's hopes and dreams you are affecting by sloppy marking. What if my parents hadn't had the disposable income to pay £100+ for these remarks? I achieved an A, but I never would have known and this would have affected not only my degree, but the rest of my life.
What are you going to do to rectify this clearly significant issue in the future?

I was 2 marks off a B in my AS Politics and Government paper. We sent it for a remark, and it came back with exactly the same marks. It did seem unfair to me, because it wasn't like I was 5 marks off a B, but I was 2 marks and it would have only taken finding one mark in each paper for my grade to go up to a B.

I know remarks have now changed, but I don't understand how it will work for essay subjects like Politics or English where you have to present an argument and interpretation, and one examiner can disagree with the interpretation or argument whilst another can agree or accept it. As much as they say you have to be able to back it up, I had a teacher last year tell me an interpretation of mine (with evidence from the text!) was wrong and not supported in the text, despite the interpretation I used being one that another teacher had told me to add in as they felt it was a very strong interpretation and the text evidence strongly supported it.
Similarly, how will you prove a marking error in an opinion/interpretation/argument based subject? I can understand it's much easier in subjects where there is a simple right or wrong answer, but not in subjects where there isn't necessarily right or wrong, how would you prove that an error has been made in the marking? I don't understand it really, tbh.

I agree; there has to be a limit somewhere. I understand it's annoying when you're just a couple of marks off a grade, but that's just life.

With regards to people's stories on here about when examiners have marked incorrectly and their grades have gone up, I think it's terrible how that's allowed to happen... Maybe all papers should be marked twice? I don't know, but it's kind of scared me...

The amount of mistakes made in marking essays when I bought my papers back was ridiculous, think essays should have to be marked my multiple examiners and then an average score found.

The marking system can never been fair.
Examiners get paid by how many scripts they can mark in a certain amount of time. Most of them will skim through answers and can miss or unfairly award marks.
Some people will get their scripts marked by a nice examiner and some are not as fortunate. It may not make a massive difference in raw marks, but a few marks can result in a change of grade.
There is so much subjectivity, especially in essay based subjects like English, History etc, they are so heavily dependent on what the individual examiner believes is a 'good answer'. An A* answer to one examiner might just be an A to another.

It definitely is not: a girl in my class was 7 marks off an A and appealed and got it changed to an A. Wtf how can 7 marks just be awarded out of the blue. Was the marker hungover ? Getting laid at the time ? Who knows.

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I was 10 marks off an A* for GCSE and went up 9.

In the exam season just gone, I got a U in my English lit paper (8/80 raw marks apparently) although my coursework was kept at A* and my AS grade was an A. Got it remarked and got an A. Held an offer for Kings, safe to say this monumental error in marking totally screwed everything up for me. I think that English lit is so subjective and what one examiner thinks is credible another may not. It actually bewilders me how I was awarded a U - I had written over 7 pages, a D/E therefore would have been more realistic.

I really, really want to see improvements to marking coursework based subjects.

The marking criteria for coursework is usually terrible, making it difficult for students to understand them and making them very reliant on their teachers. My art teacher and the supervisor for my EPQ both told me that I could stop working early because the work I'd done already would almost guarantee me an A*, but I got a B in the end for both subjects. Had I known there was something to improve on, I would have done it. Looking at the marking criteria, I still don't know what I did wrong. If you are relying on the input of teachers, and the teachers give you input which doesn't correspond to the grades the examiner gives, then I think this should be considered somehow.

Also, in both situations, it was impossible to get a remark without the permission of the whole cohort. This is not practical in the real world, and it feels like the exam boards are creating ridiculous remarking criteria which are impossible to fulfil because they can't be bothered to do remarks.