re checks

c m

ok i just viewed my papers and im raging.
im one of the unlucky ones to have their english papers graded twice.
1st grade 89.25 precent
re check 80.5 precent
this is a disgrace. how fickle these pricks can be. how can there be so much disgression in the marking and how can these old farts hate students so much that they would mark down to such and extent. im getting it checked but because its graded twice theyll probably ignore it. anyone suffer from this same incompetence?

whassupp2

My french was corrected twice and then a third time when changes were made in the marking scheme. I went up marks each time.

English is a matter of opinion.
Get it rechecked.

dreambrook

I looked at my scripts last night and in two subjects there were 3 marks missing however even if I was to add on the marks they'd still be 84.5 and 79.5...ugh but I got my course and I'm not gonna possibly waste 74euro.

eamoss

Ah I looked at mine yesterday, Was thinking of getting maths and geog rechecked (got 78% in both) to move me up to a B1 but im not gonna bother no real point in it.

My story isnt that exciting but one of my friends well he wanted to do medicine but he got 550 and thus didnt get the points. In maths he got 89.6% but they didnt round it off so he got an A2 not an A1 like he should have. In english his paper was marked twice and the 1st time it was marked he got an A2 but then it was remarked and he got an B3 :eek: he is getting both of them rechecked!!

Papillon87

I looked at my scripts yesterday. My bio paper seems to have been looked at three times: once scoring 87per cent, another 90 per cent and the one which was the final result 88 per cent. I'm only 6 marks off the a1 and some of the definitions were word perfect from the book and i got 0/3! My eng was a shambles, but my eng teacher said the results across the year showed no consistency. People getting d's and c's during the year were given b's while those predicted high grades like b's and a's (including myself) got c's. he was taking notes on the various aspects of each paper and is forwarding a complaint letter. Three girls, myself included, received 0/15 for the exact same part of the exact same comprehension question!! 0/15! My chemistry: 7 marks off an upgrade and again some things which were definitely cited in my book so gonna get it checked. In french i got 100/100 on the written productions!wooooooo!

Mini_Moose

eamoss wrote:

In maths he got 89.6% but they didnt round it off so he got an A2 not an A1 like he should have.

I knew a guy who has a similar thing happen to him with accounting a few years ago. he got his paper rechecked but it came back with the same score. so from what i can tell you dont get rounded up and only get the a1 if you have 90% or more

Raphael

It varies a lot, because it's english. It's probably the most subjectively marked exam on the Leaving Cert, because it's so difficult to put a marking scheme together for.

Eamoss: the only grade they round up is E1 to D3

Attractive Nun

Looked at English there yesterday (and today, with another teacher), getting it rechecked after initially being given a B1. I'm in two minds about the whole thing - on the one hand, I got my course and I don't really care - I only applied to view my scripts because the old English teacher rang the old mother while I was on holiday and forced me to. But on the other hand, I'm fairly convinced that was an A1-standard paper, and it would be nice to have that acknowledged after all the work I put it. So may as well.

It'll probably come back worse.

Peyton Manning

I got 319 marks in English all together. Had I got 320, I would have been up a grade, and the 5 points which denied me my first choice. Our school had an example of the guy who corrected the English test's work. It showed a test he corrected last year, and the result of the recheck, which went up quite a bit from his mark. So Im deffinately getting it re-checked. 1 f*cking mark...

Looking at my construction, the examiner obviously wasnt a Maths wizz. He gave me 35 when the figures he wrote down quite clearly added up to 38, and 45 when they added up to 47.

westhammer

I looked at mine yesterday despite doing great and getting my course. My english examiner initially gave me a B1 but obviously thought it was better as i got added marks to an A2.

Everything else was only marked once. Chemistry was dodgy though. Oh, and in accounting if you get 359 you only get an A2, no rounding up of percentages which is a bit ridiculous but whatever

R0C0

My friend is a fluent irish speaker, speaks conemara Irish.. We were fairly shocked when he only came out with a B1 in Irish in the LC.

He got it rechecked yeterday and the examiner had put question marks beside certain conemara irish words that they obviously didn't understand, our teacher has now written a big complaint to the department about the low standard of Irish the examiner displayed in correcting his test!

My french was marked twice, thank christ, d2 to a C2.

My accounting was added up wrong, got an A1, was given an A2. So i'm sending that back for the principle of it.

My English was annoying when i saw it, so many stupid mistakes.

Although i only got 71 marks for an A1(imo) essay.
need 9 marks to move another grade...

Gangsta

Everyone seems to be fairly fooked over by the english, myself included. wrote a decent B essay and got 52? Then I look over to poetry and it's 50/50!! I'm getting it rechecked because the marking was so inconsistent. Also I found out that my teacher was a bender and the way our whole class wrote the comparative was wrong :eek:

spurious

As I have said before in this forum, the 'remarking' and changing of marks is done because results have to fit into a bell curve. Otherwise, Leaving Certificates would be like fine wines, some years harder than others, some more worthwhile than others. Once a sample number of papers are corrected from all over the country, average grades are calculated, if there are too many A grades the marking scheme is made harder, if there are too many fails, it's made easier.

This is why you will see different marks on a paper, nothing to do with anyone being 'fickle'. In a recheck, they will check the totting up of marks, which is where most of the errors, if any, occur. If a paper has already been marked by an Assistant Examiner and also by an Advising Examiner, it is unlikely to be changed. While Junior Cert. correctors are under instructions to maximise the amount of marks for a candidate and so will go back over a 37% paper to find some more marks, Leaving Cert. correctors are not.

Remarks about teachers being 'benders' make me wonder if people posting here are actually Leaving Cert. standard at all.

westhammer

R0C0 wrote:

My friend is a fluent irish speaker, speaks conemara Irish.. We were fairly shocked when he only came out with a B1 in Irish in the LC.

He got it rechecked yeterday and the examiner had put question marks beside certain conemara irish words that they obviously didn't understand, our teacher has now written a big complaint to the department about the low standard of Irish the examiner displayed in correcting his test!

Maybe he used words that you can say when speaking but not in writing, you know like the caighdeán? Seems a bit stupid though

Faerie

I looked at my papers and there did seem to be quite a lot of mistakes in the correcting, but most of them wouldn't have made a difference to my grades so I'm not bothering with any rechecks!
I wish I could recheck English though, because it was marked extremely harshly. He/she didn't give me full marks in my mechanics for anything, even though I had NO spelling mistakes or errors in my grammar! Literally none! He did underline two words which apparently he couldn't read in my essay, but they looked clear to me and surely he would give the benefit of the doubt considering the pressure and time constraint. I really can't risk getting it rechecked though because I'll lose my place if I go down!
I was lucky with Irish though - it had already been rechecked by the master examiner and I went up two grades! So it shows how luck does come into your results to a certain degree!

Aidonin

Does anyone know how long it takes for papers to be checked?

Raphael

A few weeks

Dagnir Glaurung

Faerie wrote:

I wish I could recheck English though, because it was marked extremely harshly. He/she didn't give me full marks in my mechanics for anything, even though I had NO spelling mistakes or errors in my grammar! Literally none! He did underline two words which apparently he couldn't read in my essay, but they looked clear to me and surely he would give the benefit of the doubt considering the pressure and time constraint. I really can't risk getting it rechecked though because I'll lose my place if I go down!/QUOTE]

Probably too late now but you can't lose your place once you've accepted it even if you went down.

Rockerette

eamoss wrote:

My story isnt that exciting but one of my friends well he wanted to do medicine but he got 550 and thus didnt get the points. In maths he got 89.6% but they didnt round it off so he got an A2 not an A1 like he should have. In english his paper was marked twice and the 1st time it was marked he got an A2 but then it was remarked and he got an B3 :eek: he is getting both of them rechecked!!

gah the poor guy! im assumign its who i think it is.
damn i feel sorry for him, hopefully he get sorted






I really dunno how i came out with an A1 in English based on my exam.. i have never written a worse essay ever i dont think..
But i suppose i musta done something right..





Oh and re: the Irish Conemara speaker, maybe the problem was the coloquilisms (sp?). Everywhere has local things that may not stand up when people from other areas read it.. and thats fair enough i think - just cos its "right" where youre from, it mightnt necessarily be "techincally" correct..

Attractive Nun

Apparently, apparently, there's a reason very good English papers are marked down. According to my English teacher, the best English students in her class consistently get bad grades. Now, maybe she's just making excuses, but her reasoning was that examiners have so many papers to get through that all they can do is scan through the essays quickly. Often, with better writing and more complicated sentences, this can make you miss a lot of the subtleties and can even come across as sounding cluttered or clumsy. In theory, a recheck should sort that out, but the process may well be repeated again.

There are three of us in my class who would have been expecting an A1. One of us got it, I got a B1 and the other (in my view the best of us) got a C1 or C2. It sounds awfully arrogant to use the above as an excuse, but I suppose it makes sense. At least that's what I'll tell myself for the timebeing...

Rockerette

in my english class, there wouldve been 3 of us maybe who would have been expected to do pretty good, and the 3 of us got A1s, so i suppose that was on track.. dunno about the other results tho

oh and Attractive Nun, all due respect to your teacher, but it sounds like a stupid excuse.. "the best English students in her class consistently get bad grades" ?? hhmmmm...

my english teacher has been marking leaving cert englsih exams for years and years, and trust me, he would never eve just "scan through" an essay..

Papillon87

Rockerette wrote:

in my english class, there wouldve been 3 of us maybe who would have been expected to do pretty good, and the 3 of us got A1s, so i suppose that was on track.. dunno about the other results tho

oh and Attractive Nun, all due respect to your teacher, but it sounds like a stupid excuse.. "the best English students in her class consistently get bad grades" ?? hhmmmm...

my english teacher has been marking leaving cert englsih exams for years and years, and trust me, he would never eve just "scan through" an essay..

No Attractive Nun's teacher is correct. I unfortunately missed out on the best Eng teacher in my school this year but he always maintained an interest in my work. When he saw the results he said he wanted to look at my script. He has been marking scripts for many, many years and is the Head of Dept. Many institutes (ahem) have tried to poach him, but he has stayed true to his belief in real teaching. Anyway he said the scripts were extremely badly marked and is making a complaint. So I trust him because he is an extremely nice man and inspirational teacher! I'm going to miss him! Anyway, point is, English is subjectively marked and thus many people get screwed over and many, who didn't earn it, do very well in their place

westhammer

I agree that if any subject needs a change in its examination marking its English. People who do enough to get by can often get A1s by 'getting lucky'. Its quite ridiculous really. I wouldve been sour about it had I not done as well as I did

Rockerette

in case anyone thinks i got an A1 by fluke.. i didnt... my teacher was pretty much expecting one.. i just didnt think those particular exams went well..

And personally i dont know many people who "get lucky" with english exams. its one of the few exams where you cant study really, and your ability comes through, regardless of the question.. none of that "i was so lucky that experiment came up.. or that case study" or whatever.

but clearly we all have different opinions.

and sorry, but i still think that
"According to my English teacher, the best English students in her class consistently get bad grades." - is a pile of balls!
My class offers a 100% contradiction to that "theory"...

Dagnir Glaurung

Rockerette wrote:

and sorry, but i still think that
"According to my English teacher, the best English students in her class consistently get bad grades." - is a pile of balls!
My class offers a 100% contradiction to that "theory"...

I think this is right. Anybody correcting English at this level is able to spot a good writer from a bad one by the end of your first paragraph.

Rockerette

Dagnir Glaurung wrote:

I think this is right. Anybody correcting English at this level is able to spot a good writer from a bad one by the end of your first paragraph.

exactly..

smemon

isn't it a bit trivial that the majority of re-checks get marked up???

i mean... you're ultimately paying examiners to get you extra marks :rolleyes: once again a flawed system as it isn't fair on those who can't afford it.

(granted, you get it back if results change but still, some people couldn't afford it up front if you get say 6 subjects rechecked.)

Papillon87

smemon wrote:

isn't it a bit trivial that the majority of re-checks get marked up???

i mean... you're ultimately paying examiners to get you extra marks :rolleyes: once again a flawed system as it isn't fair on those who can't afford it.

(granted, you get it back if results change but still, some people couldn't afford it up front if you get say 6 subjects rechecked.)

It was stated in the Irish TImes that inly 10% of rechecks are upgraded. It gave the figures for each subject last year, and, trust me, it sure as hell wasn't "the majority" in each subject.

In relation to being able to detect a good writer from a bad one, I've won numerous writing and journalism competitions in the last three years and I got a C1. My Head Of Dept. said a lot of English examiners don't read through the essays. They scan them for key words relating to the question. Yeah, great system.:rolleyes:

westhammer

I wrote an essay my teacher gave me an A1 in, and in the actual exam i only got a B2 for it which was a bit ****ty, so I think that the essay marking is the main problem. Its easily the most subjective of the marking in the exam. The rest are marked quite well though id imagine. And my teacher marks hard before anyone says

Rockerette

Papillon87 wrote:

In relation to being able to detect a good writer from a bad one, I've won numerous writing and journalism competitions in the last three years and I got a C1. My Head Of Dept. said a lot of English examiners don't read through the essays. They scan them for key words relating to the question. Yeah, great system.:rolleyes:

Jee.... heaven forbid maybe its your own fault you got a C...?
Maybe a bad set of essays or something? Dont try blame "the system" for that one

spurious

Papillon87 wrote:

My Head Of Dept. said a lot of English examiners don't read through the essays. They scan them for key words relating to the question. Yeah, great system.:rolleyes:

Your Head of Department is making quite an allegation there.
Does he care to put his name publicly to that allegation?

There are lots of teachers all over the country make all sorts of claims about what 'they know' goes on in the examination process. If they were all involved in correcting we would not have the situation where people who have never taught or had any involvement with teaching are correcting exams.

Papillon87

Rockerette wrote:

Jee.... heaven forbid maybe its your own fault you got a C...?
Maybe a bad set of essays or something? Dont try blame "the system" for that one

There's no need to be so nasty. I didn't get either of my English papers finished but I was still expecting a B2. The system lacks in consistency.

Papillon87

spurious wrote:

Your Head of Department is making quite an allegation there.
Does he care to put his name publicly to that allegation?

There are lots of teachers all over the country make all sorts of claims about what 'they know' goes on in the examination process. If they were all involved in correcting we would not have the situation where people who have never taught or had any involvement with teaching are correcting exams.

This man HAS corrected and DOES correct Leaving Cert. English papers. I'm not going to publicly state his name without his permission or consent. He has years of experience in English at Leaving Cert. level and how scripts are corrected by lazy examiners. He knows what he is talking about.

I really don't like the fact that a couple of people on this board are being vindictive and rude in their posts, with the sentiments directed towards myself.

Rockerette

Papillon87 wrote:

There's no need to be so nasty. I didn't get either of my English papers finished but I was still expecting a B2. The system lacks in consistency.

sorry i didnt mean to come off as nasty, seriosuly i didnt.


But just, i hate it when people try to "blame the system".






And lets not turn this into a battle of the English teachers... (cos trust me, mine would win )

Papillon87

Rockerette wrote:

sorry i didnt mean to come off as nasty, seriosuly i didnt.


But just, i hate it when people try to "blame the system".






And lets not turn this into a battle of the English teachers... (cos trust me, mine would win )

We shall agree to disagree.......cos everyone within a ten mile radius of my school knows of this guy's greatness!

spurious

Your 'great guy' if indeed he works for the SEC should read some of the conditions of the contract he signed - particularly certain sections relating to the process of correcting. I'd say he'll know what I'm referring to.

It is a nonsense to suggest examiners scan answers and if he has the slightest shred of proof, (though how he could know for sure what any examiner other than himself does, I don't know) he should immediately report it to his Chief Advising Examiner.

Others here have correctly suggested there are sometimes problems with totting marks, or a difference in opinion as to the number of marks an answer should be given, but to suggest that there are numbers of examiners not even bothering to read scripts properly is outrageous, an insult to the people who examine and an insult to any candidate taking the exam.

Funkstard

I think I regret not getting Geography rechecked. I thought, and so did my teacher, that I was on the way to an A. I scraped a B1 in the end, 80.4% which is why I'm not risking it. But like, 44/80 in the option (culture & identity), and at least 73/80 in the other questions. What the hell like.

R0C0

All I'm gonna say in relation to the above posts is, Spurious and Papillion, neither one of you as students are in a position to say, definitively, how the exams are corrected. Your just basing your opinion on what your respective teachers have told you, fair enough I suppose!

IMHO, I think its naive to say that every essay is read word for word with maximum concentration.. when you consider how many exams have to be graded and the time constraints, its just not feasible. Having said that it must also be acknowledged that every examiner will have his/her own way of doing it, so best not to generalise!

spurious

R0C0, I am a teacher who has corrected exams. I joined this thread because someone had a specific query about rechecks.
I know what the procedure is.

Examiners correct every page of a script, they do not 'scan' to get the general gist. If Papillon's teacher has evidence that someone is not doing their job correctly, he should report them to the SEC and they will be glad to never employ them again. If there is no proof, allegations need to stop.

What Papillon is passing on (hearsay) casts aspersions on the work of all examiners and is an extremely serious allegation. Unless there is proof it should be withdrawn.

Attractive Nun

Maybe the marking scheme is somewhat to blame. You get 30% for clarity, which is fair enough. But, for example, when my teacher read a paragraph of one of my essays, she had to reread it to fully understand it. Immediately, you would expect this to mean that the piece was unclear and you might expect to get marked down for that. But, in reality, the reread was necessary simply because that particular paragraph was very wordy and concentrated. Now maybe you could argue that such writing is poor form, but most academic/literary writing will have passages of such a nature, and if that were to be marked down it would be rather unfair on more accomplished writers.

Obviously it's difficult to tell with English, but practices such as the above - if they happen - aren't fair.

R0C0

Spurious, Is the fact that 10% of re checked papers get graded up not evidence that some people aren't doing their jobs right?
And thats only from the people that can be bothered/afford to send their papers back!

Rockerette

i was talking to my english teacher the other night, and he told me he looked at my papers, and apparently i got 378/400, which worked out at about 94%.. i couldnt believe it like.. an A1 surprised the be-jesus outta me, but i assumed i had just scraped it..


he was talking to other teachers and everything, and he said they they all thought their students had been marked fairly



And i know that i can only speak for my own teacher, but as i said before, he would never ever just skim through an essay. whether it was our mock exams, or just a test in class, he always went through them all properly, and i dont see why he would be any different when he was marking the state exams..

each centre is going to have its own marker, so while rockerette's school will be marked fairly, that could have been just one person, who read the marking scheme perfectly, and this was reflected in the marks.

My school had haphazard English marks, 2 people who were told to do pass got A's, and some of the supposedly better students in the year were getting low Bs and Cs.

Its not fair to say "english was marked unfairly" and its not fair to say "english was marked fairly". It was a local phenomenon, this means your examiner was a fair examiner.

I am getting mine checked again because i was annoyed with it, I really thought it was one of the best exams i had done, and only got a B3. My essay earned 71 while my teacher suggested 85/90 would've been more appropriate.

And this marking was wrong in a lot of cases in my school, one guy, was docked 3 out of the 5 spelling marks for one spelling error! he lost 60% of the marks available for spelling, for making one mistake.

There were many oddities in the papers that were reviewed, but many people were of the mindset "i've got my course, no need to upset the balance", so not many are getting them checked.

Kwekubo

Is it just me or was the Geography wide open to interpretation this year? The marking scheme seemed extremely vague.

Papillon87

spurious wrote:

R0C0, I am a teacher who has corrected exams. I joined this thread because someone had a specific query about rechecks.
I know what the procedure is.

Examiners correct every page of a script, they do not 'scan' to get the general gist. If Papillon's teacher has evidence that someone is not doing their job correctly, he should report them to the SEC and they will be glad to never employ them again. If there is no proof, allegations need to stop.

What Papillon is passing on (hearsay) casts aspersions on the work of all examiners and is an extremely serious allegation. Unless there is proof it should be withdrawn.

:rolleyes: My God. A complaint has been forwarded to the relevant authorities and an investigation into the whole issue has already begun. With all due respect Spurious, you and my Head of Department are two English teachers out of thousands. Two examiners out of thousands. You are extremely naive if you believe that every single examiner is going to exercise the same diligence as yourself and my HOD when it comes to correcting. This should be the case, but this is not an ideal world.

Papillon87

Se&#225 wrote: »

Hmm.. not really. It costs an amazing 37 euro to get a re-check. If someone can afford paying for the Leaving Cert exams they can well afford a recheck. Besides , if the paper is upgraded the money is refunded in full.


You're not paying anyone to get a better grade. You're paying to register your exam in an appeal based on any given reason regarding the grading on your paper.

I'm studying English and got a B3 in my exam. It was the highest grade in the Year and my teacher wanted all of us to appeal as there was many inconsistencies in the exam. My essay was given 100% by my teacher but got a mere 50% in the exam.

The essay, by nature, should include personal vocabulary. This is to say that the examiner should be able to get to know the student through their use of language. At one point in my essay i wrote how the government had given themselves a "boo-boo" (by using such a childish phrase I was attempting to be patronising to the evident mistakes perpetrated by the United States), a line was written over the word and "expression" was written beside it, docking marks. Incredible. Other things such as the word "ethos" and "pathos" were underlined for supposed misuse of vocabulary when in fact they were used tersely and not to just use big words.. My teacher went nuts when she saw that.

An appeal will not affect my place in college, it will only keep my mind at ease as I am dedicating the next three years of my life studying the damned subject!

Here, here! Well said.I'm also studying English so getting it rechecked is for my own piece of mind, as I have my first choice in the bag.

Dagnir Glaurung

Papillon87 wrote:

:rolleyes: My God. A complaint has been forwarded to the relevant authorities and an investigation into the whole issue has already begun. With all due respect Spurious, you and my Head of Department are two English teachers out of thousands. Two examiners out of thousands. You are extremely naive if you believe that every single examiner is going to exercise the same diligence as yourself and my HOD when it comes to correcting. This should be the case, but this is not an ideal world.

Maybe Spurius could correct me if I'm wrong but every examiner has their work constantly checked by a superior examiner and if correcting isn't up to standard they have to correct them again. Plus I belive that you have to correct JC and be competent at that before you correct LC. It isn't simply a case of a teacher turning up, getting a bag and correcting them. Every examiner is constantly monitored to ensure that everyone is marked fairly. Not that mistakes can't be made but it is very unlikely that an examiner could correct a large batch poorly.

Papillon87

Dagnir Glaurung wrote:

Maybe Spurius could correct me if I'm wrong but every examiner has their work constantly checked by a superior examiner and if correcting isn't up to standard they have to correct them again. Plus I belive that you have to correct JC and be competent at that before you correct LC. It isn't simply a case of a teacher turning up, getting a bag and correcting them. Every examiner is constantly monitored to ensure that everyone is marked fairly. Not that mistakes can't be made but it is very unlikely that an examiner could correct a large batch poorly.

No, they are not "constanly checked". They submit a couple of pieces of corrected work upon request from an examining superintendent.