Marking schemes changed. Good/bad for you?

pathway33

Post number 3 : 'They changed the whole marking scheme on us yesterday and I mean everything'

Post number 5: 'They seem to be changing lots of the schemes this year, moreso than other years.'

>>>> http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055964349

My question: What's the point allocating your time according to the marks on the papers if the entire thing is going to be changed after?

**Timbuk2**

That's common enough! A lot of things may have changed, but they are only small changes. E.g. 5 marks for Section A (i) is now 3 marks, whereas A(ii) is now 7 marks. It's a pain for the correctors to have to go back and change everything they already corrected, but it's common enough to keep the percentages of grades the same!

pathway33

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

It's a pain for the correctors to have to go back and change everything they already corrected

:eek: That sound like a nightmare. What a bizzarre system. Student friendly news coming from exam corrector

'the revised marking scheme is very....shall we say student friendly'

jumpguy

pathway33 wrote: »

:eek: That sound like a nightmare. What a bizzarre system.

When the marking schemes are first made they're pretty much preliminary, things have to be adjusted. For example, if an examiner was correcting an abnormal amount of A1s, the department might adjust to marking scheme to make it harder and reduce the amount of A1s, and vice versa.

ummtea

They sound like they're on our side?

H2student

What do you mean our side? It depends on your paper in my opinion. Let's be honest, would you rather 1000 of us getting a grade up (pushing you down in the queue for a university place) or just yourself getting a grade up?

ummtea

They'll let us pass if we're one mark from a pass sort of thing. I don't think it makes a difference if they push all of the grades up. We'll still be standing in the same place in terms of CAO offers.

ayumi

why are the marking scheme not out yet?

spurious

ayumi wrote: »

why are the marking scheme not out yet?

They are and the correctors have them. When they are finalised, they will be released publicly, probably shortly after the LC results.

unknown13

Why do you even care? I doubt you even know about 5% of what you put down in every exam.

**Timbuk2**

I can't even remember my LC papers anymore! I'm glad the marking schemes aren't publised online over the summer - I would make myself paranoid looking at them thinking 'Oh I didn't get x' etc.

randylonghorn

pathway33 wrote: »

My question: What's the point allocating your time according to the marks on the papers if the entire thing is going to be changed after?

I suspect it's more likely to be the guidelines as to what is acceptable for full / good marks for each section that is changing, as the first main sample has been corrected and the results of that evaluated. The Dep. Chief. and Advising Examiners will have corrected a smaller preliminary sample earlier, but the first 20 from each corrector gives a bigger sample statistically, and often throws up unexpected problems ... from students presenting alternative but valid answers which may not have been included in the schemes originally, to a lot of students doing unexpectedly poorly in a particular question, to an inordinate amount of students doing extremely poorly or indeed extremely well overall.

The breakdown of marks for the different sections doesn't normally change, at least I never remember it doing so in English ...

**Timbuk2**

In Maths the breakdown of marks can often change. In Higher, there are three parts, a b and c, worth 10 20 and 20 marks respectively. If a lot of people were doing extremely bad in part c, the marks might be adjusted to 10 25 15, or similar. It has happened often in the past.

Sometimes if a part b is hard, there are more marks going for part a, which is usually straightforward.

muffinz

Not too surprising, looking through the past papers in subjects such as maths, theres never a year when they didnt switch around the marks!

This years HL maths 2 will be marked harder i reckon, bad for me coz I nearly failed P1

But in subs such as geog, the markin schemes cant be changed as far as I know, which is grand

rainbowtrout

**Timbuk2** wrote: »

In Maths the breakdown of marks can often change. In Higher, there are three parts, a b and c, worth 10 20 and 20 marks respectively. If a lot of people were doing extremely bad in part c, the marks might be adjusted to 10 25 15, or similar. It has happened often in the past.

Sometimes if a part b is hard, there are more marks going for part a, which is usually straightforward.

Yes you are right, it often does change, but I think the point randylonghorn was making is that the marks in a section don't change. ie the total marks for a question in maths always add up to 50 one way or another.

Another type of question and I think you mentioned something similar earlier was where marks were 5 and 5 and then they become 7 and 3. That could be because it's found that from correcting students found a particular question difficult and it was bringing grades down overall, so by giving 7 and 3, a student only getting one answer still gets most of the marks instead of only half. It can also happen on questions where there is leeway in the way it is written eg *'Write notes on hitler's invasion of poland. It might have been envisaged that the students would be able to give 5 points and be awarded four marks each, so 20 in total, but the reality might be that no one is able to write 5 valid points and not even huge numbers are able to get four, so the scheme might be changed to reflect that. Four valid points accepted at 5 marks each (still 20), so even the people only getting two points now get 10 marks instead of eight, and four points will get you full marks instead of 16. 4 marks in most papers would be at least 1%, so they all add up.

3fullback

Could someone be as kind as to copy and paste some of the post from the link that th OP left as i cant seem to access it ? and link or info would be greatly appreciated .

randylonghorn

There's no reason why you can't access it?

And there's nothing interesting to copypasta tbh.

Professional Griefer

randylonghorn wrote: »

There's no reason why you can't access it?

And there's nothing interesting to copypasta tbh.

Same thing with me, it says:
Ix Deadmau5, you do not have permission to access this page. This could be due to one of several reasons:

1. You may be trying to post in a restricted forum such as Soccer, or one of the many private forums on boards.ie.
   For clarification, check our Help Desk forum.
2. You may be banned from this forum if you contravened an element of the forum charter.
3. Your user account may not have sufficient privileges to access this page. Are you trying to edit someone else's post, access administrative features or some other privileged system?
4. If you are trying to post, the administrator may have disabled your account, or it may be awaiting activation.

randylonghorn

Ah, ok, now that I look more closely, it's been moved to somewhere which I have access to, and you don't.

In any case, there really isn't anything that would tell you anything you didn't know already, or that hasn't been discussed on this thread ... marking schemes are always subject to review and amendment, especially after the first main sample has been corrected.

And no, the missing thread didn't give any information whatsoever about what changes had been implemented, or what the marking schemes included. You're intelligent enough to know that it couldn't.

It mainly comprised of people going "Groan! I wish they would finalise them ....!"

I doubt they expected an onslaught of LC students hopping in to go "what?! ... what?!" ... though they probably should have! :rolleyes:

EuropeanSon

Ah well, they can't dock marks if I got everything right!

randylonghorn

EuropeanSon wrote: »

Ah well, they can't dock marks if I got everything right!

Shooo!!

G'wan, shoo!

You're depressing everybody!

UpTheSlashers

Basically the marking schemes are just change to avoid an increase or decrease in students acheiving a certain grade in certain subject from year to year?
Eg. A certain percentage of students get A1s in French each year. The alterations ensure that 5-10% (for example sake) get A1 each year. If 20% of students get an A1 then certain questions will be marked harder. If too many people get E's or F's then its marked easier?
I think?

UpTheSlashers

EuropeanSon wrote: »

Ah well, they can't dock marks if I got everything right!

Just kidding :P