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Course work moderation, UK
Moderators are appointed by the exam boards to check that teachers in schools across the country have marked candidates’ coursework in accordance with the boards’ guidelines. Moderation is necessary because of the thousands of teachers who are marking students. Training in marking coursework is done on a cascade system and every teacher has not attended a stanrdisation meeting. In addition schools’ GCSE results are affected by coursework marks, so without moderation there would be more pressure on teachers to award higher marks than can be justified. Moderators attend training meetings in March or April each year, prior to the coursework deadlines. At these meetings moderators are given sample coursework to moderate and be asked to justify their decisions. Moderation entails checking that the original marking of the coursework falls within acceptable limits. One of the most common refrains at moderator training meetings is “We are moderating this marking, not remarking the piece”. A moderator acknowledges that the best person to know what has happened in the classroom is the teacher. If a teacher writes on the coursework, “Explained verbally” then no moderator will argue with that teacher’s marks arising from the verbal explanation. Moderators are looking for inconsistencies between teachers, for incorrect application of the marking criteria, for arithmetic errors and for cheating. If a school’s assessments are within a given percentage of the moderator’s assessments then no change will be made to the coursework marks. If a school’s marks are outside the agreement limit, eg +/– 10% then the schools marks can all be changed. Schools often aim to be +9%, giving their students an advantage in the final exam results. If you are accepted for a moderator’s position you will need somewhere to store and access up to 20 large parcels of candidates’ coursework. You will need a large desk to work at and the ability to handle large amounts of paperwork. You will be asked to moderate one or two schools’ work and to send the moderated samples on to a senior moderator. The senior moderator will phone you and give advice based on your work. Occasionally you will need to phone individual schools in relation to missing work or incorrect additions of marks. The entire moderation process takes about 4-5 weeks. It happens just before the main examining period, so you will be able to apply for examining and moderating positions with few problems. Moderating for more than one examination board at a time has caused me problems on occasion. Each examination board has its own set of paperwork, so you have to be able to switch mindsets quickly. A more serious problem lies in the different interpretations of the marking criteria that senior moderators from the different exam boards have. You have to keep two sets of moderating criteria in your head that are very similar, but that have crucial differences. Your marking of your own students’ coursework will be faster and more accurate as a result of your moderating experience. You will also have valuable insight into how other schools do coursework and into the entire moderation process. |
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