Re: Explanation of HSC Marks (Moderating)
A few notes from an HSC marker (Modern History 1992 - 2005 and hoping for 2006 but won't know for another month or so until the appointment letters for this year are sent out).
The supervisor at your centre ensures that all the papers have been collected from your exams and that a note is made if a student is absent. They will have some paper work to fill in which will mention your school but that is not on the paper that goes to the markers.
They then send the papers to the marking centre. At the marking centre the clerical staff check that what the exam centre said it sent has actually arrived and arrange the questions into piles according to the requirements of the subject. They also put on each pile the mark pages for the markers to write on. At this marking centre all papers within a particular subject are marked. They are not marked in different centres for different regions.
Marking starts some days after you do the exam - I mark Modern History and have done so since 1992 and have never started marking less than four days after the exam and usually closer to a week. This year it will be over a week after the exam before we start marking.
This is to allow time for most of the papers from around the world - yes the world as students do sit the HSC in places other than NSW - to reach the marking centre - mostly at Homebush but not all of them are marked there. Some subjects are marked in places like Bathurst - but that is where the entire exam is marked - or the entire section of the paper not just papers from different regions.
A marking session or two is spent by the Senior Markers working out sample scripts at each standard for their team of markers to use in the first day or so to get their standard right - i.e. so that all markers in each group and across the same question are marking to the same standard. Senior Markers start a day or so before the rest of the markers.
Usually after about 6 hours of this briefing (remember I am talking Modern History here but other exams are similar in format just the briefing time may be longer or shorter depending on the question) markers start marking for real.
Two markers from the team mark each set of papers but not at the same time - usually a day or so will pass between the first and second marks. At Modern we will mark about 45 essays a night which the clerical staff will collect after we have finished and then they record the first mark. A day or so later they will give another marker that entire bundle to do the second mark. One thing to note is that if you are at a school with more than 20 students in the course it is possible that not everyone from your school will even be marked by the same markers depending on how each subject organises the piles. Some do bundle entire schools and other subjects divide large classes into bundles of 20 (20 students are listed on one page of the markers sheet). The next 20 students might even be marked by a different team of markers.
Each subject does this slightly differently but at Modern the Senior Marker only marks those responses where the two markers in their group are discrepant in their marks e.g. I give a question 18/25 and the second marker gives it 12/25 then the Senior Marker would read the paper and decide on the right mark. If the difference is 3 or less there is no third mark.
At no time do we know which school we are marking. When the papers are collected at your school there is a paper that indicates the school but markers do NOT see that paper. That is dealt with only by the clerical staff.
The only information we have on the papers we are marking are the centre numbers and the student numbers within that centre. Sure sometimes someone may know a centre number because they have taught at that school but that is rare.
Markers do not mark there own school nor the school where a close family member is sitting that exam. On the desk where we are sitting there is a form identifying our school and its centre number so the clerical staff who issue the bundles to be marked can ensure that you don't mark your own school and even if you did the computer would pick it up when the marks are entered as the marker indicates which bundle they mark. If a mistake did happen and a marker got their own school and didn't pick it up then the computer would simply tell the clerical staff that the first/second mark needs to be redone (computer won't accept marks if the marker's school centre number and the school centre number whose marks are being entered are registered as being the same)
We do not all come from good schools. I mark with people from a range of schools - private, public, catholic, selective. Any teacher who has taught the subject for the required years - each subject will differ here depending on the number of applicants - can apply and the Supervisor of Marking is required to have a range of teachers from different schools, systems and experience so that all different abilities and experiences are included in the groups.
Please believe me when I say that we are as fair as we can be.
Sure sometimes we are tired when we mark but we do do our best to be fair and unbiased and the BOS does its best to give you the marks you deserve.
You sound like you don't want to believe in our intregrity - we do really try to give marks to students and to be fair and to suggest anything less is not fair to the markers who are professional and want to give students fair marks for the work presented.
As for saying that if we got a bad essay first up we will be biased against the rest in that bundle - that is not my experience.
I have often come across a weak first essay and then had some brilliant ones in the same centre and vice versa. As a teacher of many years standing I am fully aware that the first student alphabetically in the group is not always the best indicator of the ability level of the entire class and those with whom I have marked over the years would feel the same.
Sorry for the length of the post but I felt that it was important to get some facts out there about the integrity of the marking process and the professionalism of the teachers who do the marking of these exams, which are so important to thing young people of NSW.
A few notes from an HSC marker (Modern History 1992 - 2005 and hoping for 2006 but won't know for another month or so until the appointment letters for this year are sent out).
The supervisor at your centre ensures that all the papers have been collected from your exams and that a note is made if a student is absent. They will have some paper work to fill in which will mention your school but that is not on the paper that goes to the markers.
They then send the papers to the marking centre. At the marking centre the clerical staff check that what the exam centre said it sent has actually arrived and arrange the questions into piles according to the requirements of the subject. They also put on each pile the mark pages for the markers to write on. At this marking centre all papers within a particular subject are marked. They are not marked in different centres for different regions.
Marking starts some days after you do the exam - I mark Modern History and have done so since 1992 and have never started marking less than four days after the exam and usually closer to a week. This year it will be over a week after the exam before we start marking.
This is to allow time for most of the papers from around the world - yes the world as students do sit the HSC in places other than NSW - to reach the marking centre - mostly at Homebush but not all of them are marked there. Some subjects are marked in places like Bathurst - but that is where the entire exam is marked - or the entire section of the paper not just papers from different regions.
A marking session or two is spent by the Senior Markers working out sample scripts at each standard for their team of markers to use in the first day or so to get their standard right - i.e. so that all markers in each group and across the same question are marking to the same standard. Senior Markers start a day or so before the rest of the markers.
Usually after about 6 hours of this briefing (remember I am talking Modern History here but other exams are similar in format just the briefing time may be longer or shorter depending on the question) markers start marking for real.
Two markers from the team mark each set of papers but not at the same time - usually a day or so will pass between the first and second marks. At Modern we will mark about 45 essays a night which the clerical staff will collect after we have finished and then they record the first mark. A day or so later they will give another marker that entire bundle to do the second mark. One thing to note is that if you are at a school with more than 20 students in the course it is possible that not everyone from your school will even be marked by the same markers depending on how each subject organises the piles. Some do bundle entire schools and other subjects divide large classes into bundles of 20 (20 students are listed on one page of the markers sheet). The next 20 students might even be marked by a different team of markers.
Each subject does this slightly differently but at Modern the Senior Marker only marks those responses where the two markers in their group are discrepant in their marks e.g. I give a question 18/25 and the second marker gives it 12/25 then the Senior Marker would read the paper and decide on the right mark. If the difference is 3 or less there is no third mark.
At no time do we know which school we are marking. When the papers are collected at your school there is a paper that indicates the school but markers do NOT see that paper. That is dealt with only by the clerical staff.
The only information we have on the papers we are marking are the centre numbers and the student numbers within that centre. Sure sometimes someone may know a centre number because they have taught at that school but that is rare.
Markers do not mark there own school nor the school where a close family member is sitting that exam. On the desk where we are sitting there is a form identifying our school and its centre number so the clerical staff who issue the bundles to be marked can ensure that you don't mark your own school and even if you did the computer would pick it up when the marks are entered as the marker indicates which bundle they mark. If a mistake did happen and a marker got their own school and didn't pick it up then the computer would simply tell the clerical staff that the first/second mark needs to be redone (computer won't accept marks if the marker's school centre number and the school centre number whose marks are being entered are registered as being the same)
We do not all come from good schools. I mark with people from a range of schools - private, public, catholic, selective. Any teacher who has taught the subject for the required years - each subject will differ here depending on the number of applicants - can apply and the Supervisor of Marking is required to have a range of teachers from different schools, systems and experience so that all different abilities and experiences are included in the groups.
Please believe me when I say that we are as fair as we can be.
Sure sometimes we are tired when we mark but we do do our best to be fair and unbiased and the BOS does its best to give you the marks you deserve.
You sound like you don't want to believe in our intregrity - we do really try to give marks to students and to be fair and to suggest anything less is not fair to the markers who are professional and want to give students fair marks for the work presented.
As for saying that if we got a bad essay first up we will be biased against the rest in that bundle - that is not my experience.
I have often come across a weak first essay and then had some brilliant ones in the same centre and vice versa. As a teacher of many years standing I am fully aware that the first student alphabetically in the group is not always the best indicator of the ability level of the entire class and those with whom I have marked over the years would feel the same.
Sorry for the length of the post but I felt that it was important to get some facts out there about the integrity of the marking process and the professionalism of the teachers who do the marking of these exams, which are so important to thing young people of NSW.
