In last week’s newsletter, the Secret Teacher explained how exam marking worked prior to the pandemic, with in-person markers meetings allowing teachers to work together.

Today, in part two of a three-part series on exam marking, they take a look at how things have changed.

When we went back to marking last year, the big change was the markers meeting didn’t happen in person.

All the markers were required to watch a video, and I was really, really surprised when I was told that would be the way to do it.

I thought I wouldn’t be able to mark and would really, really struggle, because it’s that in-person discussion, and that time you spend together marking, that allows you to get that clear understanding and go away and do your marking accurately.

The Herald:

That was my thought initially, but I decided I’d have an open mind about it and see how it goes, and I was really surprised. I thought there were actually benefits to having the video, as opposed to the discussion, because there’s a big presentation before we actually get down to looking at scripts.

The senior team take you through samples and they talk you through, and that was useful to have as a video, because you could then go back and forward and do it at your own pace, and do it in your own living room and be completely comfortable in your own environment.

I’m being optimistic. For me, I can see there are benefits, however, there have definitely been drawbacks. I feel very lucky, because I came into this pre-recorded markers meeting as a marker who’s been marking for the SQA for about six years now consecutively, so I’ve had the benefit of six years of in-person markers meetings and experience of doing it accurately every year.

The Secret Teacher | 'The exam marking system worked really, really well... until the pandemic came along'

I’ve got a friend who’s a team leader, and she talked about the amount of markers this year who didn’t qualify. Had we not intervened, taken them by the hand and walked them through qualification scripts, they wouldn’t have qualified.

I found my marking a bit more challenging this year, just because we didn’t have that day chatting together at the hotel. My friend said, as team leaders, they all still got to go and meet together in-person, and have a bit of a mini marking session as team leaders. It meant they were on top of the paper, and they found that, on the whole, there was a huge rise in the number of markers who were struggling to get qualified, to such an extent that they would have struggled to get the papers marked had they not intervened and hand-held a lot of struggling markers through qualification.

The Herald:

Team leaders were ultimately then able to make a bit more money for themselves, because if one of their team drops out they can, if they want, request those scripts, and they can mark them for themselves and make a bit of extra money.

The team leaders are definitely concerned, because it looks as if Qualifications Scotland (which is going to be the new SQA) are not going to be willing to pay the amount of money that the SQA used to pay for full markers meetings. It looks like they might have to adopt a hybrid approach where, for the National 5 qualification they’re perhaps going to have that level as a pre-recorded, non-live markers meeting, and they’ll only get markers together for the more challenging Higher English.

That’s still all to be confirmed, but it’s made a big impact this year. There’s been a lot of chat this year, because it’s a pre-recorded video that markers are required to watch, a lot of markers, particularly those who have never marked before, don’t really get the importance of that markers meeting.

The feeling amongst more experienced markers and team leaders was that the markers meeting being a video allowed a lot of markers not to watch the video, or not to pay attention. There seemed to be a lot of people who clearly hadn’t listened to the video, had pretended to listen to the video but hadn’t, or had listened to the video but hadn’t taken it in.

There were specific messages. They specifically named things like “for question A, we’re not accepting just the quote ‘laugh’.” So if there are markers who are consistently awarding candidates quoting that word ‘laugh’, then it’s clear that they’ve not viewed the video, or they’ve not understood it.

New markers, particularly, didn’t understand the importance of it, and there were a lot of markers who – ironically – hadn’t done their homework.

NEXT WEEK: The Secret Teacher compares past and present approaches as they conclude their in-depth look at exam marking.

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