+- The Lurker Lounge Forums (https://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums)
+-- Forum: The Lurker Lounge (https://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/forum-4.html)
+--- Forum: The Lounge (https://www.lurkerlounge.com/forums/forum-12.html)
+--- Thread: Admin staff 'marking GCSE papers' (/thread-5810.html)
Admin staff 'marking GCSE papers' - NiteFox - 08-22-2005
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/4172812.stm
Or, for a more outraged view on the subject:
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-13418182,00.html
The gist is this: Edexcel, one of Britain's examination boards, have been accused of allowing untrained staff to aid in the marking of GCSE papers, generally Religious Studies papers. No doubt some of the 2.4% of students who failed their GCSEs are lining up their complaints to hopefully better their grades.
Naturally, this is newsworthy because everyone expects the persons responsible for marking GCSE papers to be the veritable Stephen Hawkins of their chosen subject, and allowing untrained mouth-breathers to mark their little Darren's papers is a travesty.
There is some simple realities for this little debacle: First, it was only on Religious Studies papers which are by no means Quantum Physics, and second is that the questions that the untrained secretaries were marking were the RE equivalents of 2+2=?.
But there is an underlying current beneath all this, this is the first time that Edexcel hauled in their own staff to mark papers, but the truth of the matter is that examination boards across the whole of Britain have been using so-called non-teaching staff to validate the accuracy of examination grades has been going on for years.
I know this, because last year I was working for the Welsh Joint Education Committee as one of these second-tier checkers. The correct title was Temporary Clerk, but in reality the term "Desk Monkey" would be more accurate.
Here's how the whole dealio goes down: You and several hundred other students (For they were inevitably university and college students, working a summer job beetween school years) sit down in a non-airconditioned room. When an exam is finished in school (Going back a few weeks in time, of course) all the papers are bundled up in large plastic envelopes and delivered directly from the school to the examiner, who sits down with his or her biro pen (Green is quite popular these days) and a bottle of Drambuie and proceeds to mark each and every paper, adding up the marks and putting the tally on the front page. Examiner then bundles up the papers in the same envelope, then wraps them up and shoots them off to the board, where they find their way to what can only be described as a warehouse of paper.
Unvalidated papers are then stacked up, and all the Clerks scoop up as many as they can carry, deposit them on their desk with their little nub of a pencil, their black marker, calculator, and whatever other little distractions they need to make it through a session (Mine was a walkman and a stack of tapes, others had candies or radios or whatever), and begin checking the marking arithmetic. If the math adds up, we tick off the paper and bundle it back into the envelope. If every paper checks out, we mark the envelope with the marker and file it away for future use.
If there's a problem, then we cross off the paper with the correct tally, write a little report about the problem, and leave the problem papers seperate from the rest of the stack to be collected at a future date. When we have to remove papers from bundles, we mark off the envelope but also write the student's number on the back of the package so that whoever goes through the third stage of validation knows that papers are missing.
And, my lord, it's a nice and simple minimum wage job. Better than flipping burgers at any rate. Unlimited coffee providing your 20p pieces hold out, and the occassional laugh because we're not just dealing with the cream of the academic crop but also the idiots. Officially, we're supposed to just ignore the paper contents and just check the marks, but nobody who has ever done the job managed to do so without reading at least one bundle of papers from start to finish.
A lot of students fail the typical 2+2 questions, and usually with hilarious results.
But I digress. We tally up the marks with our calculators. Purists will argue that we should be doing the math in our heads and that we're being lazy and stupid for relying on calculators. Truth is, a lot of people start their first day without electronical aid. Everyone inevitably switches over when they find their first problem package.
See, most of the examiners do the math in their head as well. This is the problem.
We find a hell of a lot of errors, both mathematically and other. Usually, it's only an error of maybe two to five points on any paper, replicated maybe three times in any bundle. However, we get some doozies - One pack I marked contained maybe fifteen papers, two of which were returned to the bundle with correct marks. Another paper had a massive 10% error against the student, who would have gotten an B had the examiner's word been final but was eventually bumped up to an A.
The 'other' errors stem from when the examiner forgets what subject he or she is specialising in. It's common practice for the Clerks to pick the packages that contain papers more to their taste, subjects they know; not only could we spot massive inconsistencies (Two papers with similar answers, one marked as correct the other as incorrect), but we could even figure out when an examiner completely screwed up their marking. On two seperate occassions I spotted students giving perfectly acceptible answers and receiving nothing for their efforts. We're not talking about 2+2 questions, either.
However, for the most part the errors were purely mathematical. And guess who are the worst when it comes to adding up their work?
I bet if you're cynical you'd say that the mathematics examiners can't add up.
You'd be right. Near the end of the period there was an awful lot of maths packages to check, because nearly everyone had checked some before and had nothing but grief. I estimate that about 90% of maths packages had a problem with at least one paper in them, and I'm not just talking quantity but quality as well - That aforementioned 10% 'blip' was on a maths paper.
Even if the examiners are trained, they're bloody useless.
Maths examiners can't count.
And the moral of the story is that untrained checkers on minimum wage can sometimes do a better job than those with all the benefits of training and a big, fat paycheck.
So screw the naysayers. Those secretaries did their job, and probably did it better than the people you would expect to get it right first time.
Admin staff 'marking GCSE papers' - --Pete - 08-22-2005
Hi,
Neat little story. Thanks for the insight and grin. But, on one point, I must comment.
NiteFox,Aug 22 2005, 05:14 AM Wrote:We tally up the marks with our calculators. Purists will argue that we should be doing the math in our heads and that we're being lazy and stupid for relying on calculators.[right][snapback]86876[/snapback][/right]Screw the purists. They'd also have you eating your meat raw, dressing in animal skis, and scratching the scores on wood planks with a flint chip. ;)
However, for simple addition, I bet a person who is well versed with the abacus would beat the pants off the calculator users. :)
--Pete
Admin staff 'marking GCSE papers' - whyBish - 08-23-2005
NiteFox,Aug 23 2005, 02:14 AM Wrote:I bet if you're cynical you'd say that the mathematics examiners can't add up.
[right][snapback]86876[/snapback][/right]
Mathematicians know the theory of how to add up, but it is the accountants that know the practice of adding up:
I can't keep score in my tennis matches (Math degree), but the lady from the tax office never misses a point :P
Admin staff 'marking GCSE papers' - NiteFox - 08-23-2005
*Sigh*
And once again, the tabloids have a field day.