marking | Schools Week

AI marking: the answer to poor recruitment or ‘pure snake oil’?

Bot exam markers, robot tutors and AI-written reports are all now being used in schools as they look to ride the tech revolution to slash workload and boost outcomes for pupils. Jessica Hill and Jack Dyson speak to the founders behind some of the products being rolled out in schools… An AI developer is trialling […]

AI: how are schools using the technology in classrooms?

Ministers hope AI can ‘transform’ teacher workloads, but just 17 per cent of teachers have used the technology in schools

Post-qualification admissions: Ofqual says university reforms risk ‘unacceptable’ results delays

Ofqual has warned exam results could be delayed and students miss out on places if the government relies on slashing marking time to deliver a radical overhaul of university admissions. The regulator said post-qualification admissions reforms would rely on results for level 3 qualifications, including AS and A Levels, being released up to three weeks […]

Exam board marking league tables delayed by monitoring concerns

Ofqual, the exams regulator, is still trying to find a way to publish data on how the quality of marking varies between exam boards, more than three years after the idea was floated. Dame Glenys Stacey (pictured below), the former chief regulator at Ofqual, announced in June 2015 that the organisation would publish metrics for […]

School where staff mark ‘how they like’ gets government approval

A school which gave teachers a “carte blanche” to mark pupils’ work “however they like” has been picked out by the government as an example of good practice. Barr Beacon School, near Birmingham, has halved the time staff spend grading homework by lifting all marking requirements and allowing them to give pupils written feedback twice […]

GCSE grade changes increase by 52% – mostly due to GCSE English

The number of GCSE grades changed at a marking review this year has increased by 52 per cent, with over 25,000 more changes than in 2016. This year, 73,840 GCSE grades were changed compared with 48,430 last year. Only three per cent more GCSE exams were sat this year. Ofqual said the rise “stemmed principally […]

Half of English Literature exam papers not given ‘correct’ grade, Ofqual finds

Ofqual study reveals ‘marking consistency metrics’ for different subjects

Multiple-choice exams plus portfolios – proposal for a new assessment system

Marking can never be 100 per cent reliable. So perhaps it is time, says one-time examiner Debra Kidd, to remove open-ended tasks from the exam system altogether I was once an examiner. It was a mind numbing, cheerless experience that was paid at a pittance, but I did it, year on year, because it gave me […]

How do examiners decide grades?

The exams are finished and GCSE and A-level students are heading off for summer. But there are 12 weeks – and a lot of work – from “pens down” to results day Did you hear that noise? It’s the sound of thousands of students collectively breathing a sigh of relief. If April is the cruellest […]