Leaving Cert Examiners?

estebancambias

I was just thinking are they leaving cert examiners looking to give people good marks or are they really particular when correcting?

Also I think the leaving cert if unfair, case in point, for my history project if I get a male correcting it im sure he will be interested but if its a women I wont be marked as well. There should be a full proof way of just correcting the papers. The question I ask is, how can you judge a English essay? Who decides if its A,B or C material

ninebeanrows

Think about somebody marking English!

Never ever count on English

justbringit89

ther have a certin marking scheme for everything inc essays . for exampe 30 marks for coherence of delivery and 30 for Vocab and cant remember the rest

DK man

Ye - I'm a teacher (not English) and two teachers were discussing an essay which one was correcting for the mocks - She read it out and it was considered funny and well written by one and trashey by another 1 said B1 thought D.......... Big gap!!!!!!

There is a marking scheme for each subject but English probably is a little bit loser than other subjects.....

I marked the CSPE a few years ago and met other markers at the marking conference........ In general teachers really want to pass and award marks to the students and do so generously in some instances...... The big issue is that students very often don't read the questions properly......... So my advise is read very carefully and give want u r asked for and u wil do wel...

Best of luck............. And remember ther r more important things in life than exams.....;)

JC 2K3

I was getting high Bs and As in English until my teacher left on Maternity leave, my friend was getting Bs and Cs and was pissed because his grinds teacher was giving him As for the same essays. However, since we've gotten a new teacher I'm getting Bs and Cs and he's up to high Bs and As. It's crazy. Our new teacher is older and far more experienced, however(he's on the English examiners board), and therefore I trust the grades he gives me more.

Still, I'm not gonna rely on English.

cson

english along with art is probably the most subjective subject to correct. What Sister Bernadette thinks is an A1 essay will differ a lot from what 26 yr old Ms Murphy will think is. Diffrent strokes for different folks.

sd123

Thats one thing i hate about english. the dodgiest thing is the short stories cos there really isn't a marking scheme for those, all they look for is an intro, complication, climax/ anticlimax and reolution. its really stupid.
the great thing about my physics teacher is that she used to mark LC scripts and she told us the way they are marked, like if she was marking loads of papers with an average of a C or D and then gets to yours and you get 89% they will give you the extra marks to get the A1 but if your script is close to alot of A's and B's you will only be given the A2. the examiner doesn't grade the paper but knows the amount of marks required to receive the different grades.

shazzyshaz

out of interest how much do examinders get paid??? always wondered this and how many papers they have to correct! random i no.

sd123

not sure exactly how much they get paid but ive heard that not many teachers do it any more cos the money's supposed to be bad. most examiners are college students nowaday

Time Magazine

sd123 wrote:

not sure exactly how much they get paid but ive heard that not many teachers do it any more cos the money's supposed to be bad. most examiners are college students nowaday

I don't think that's right at all.

sd123

Ibid wrote:

I don't think that's right at all.

its only what ive heard. i am open to contradiction!

fantacan

estebancambias wrote:

Also I think the leaving cert if unfair, case in point, for my history project if I get a male correcting it im sure he will be interested but if its a women I wont be marked as well. There should be a full proof way of just correcting the papers. The question I ask is, how can you judge a English essay? Who decides if its A,B or C material

Re: History: Um, why?!

English is marked on:
Clarity of Purpose (Demonstrating that you understood the task in hand, e.g. referring to the terms of the question over and over) 30%
Coherence of Delivery (How well you presented your information, style etc)30%
Language (Good Vocab, proper spelling etc,) 30%
Mechanics (Punctuation, think spelling goes under this) 10%

No im not a nerd, i just know it because our English teacher writes it up on the white board with every answer she gives us back! Essays tend to be a bit looser but same marking scheme applies.

estebancambias

well its about a football match, so im presuming a male would be more interested

spurious

I have only corrected JC so far, but I'm sure much the same applies to those that do LC.

I try to give the benefit of the doubt where I can. If a candidate has been doing OK in most qs and then makes a complete dog's dinner of one, I will try and find as many marks as I can for that q (while staying within the marking scheme). Mind you, if there have been a number of answers where it's obvious the candidate is spoofing (this is v obvious in History) then when it comes to a close grade decision, I might be less likely to go rooting for extras.

Yes, there is payment for it, though it's not really worth it. The most papers I ever completed was just over 500 (Higher JC History).

It takes a full three weeks in July - about 5-6 hours a day constant, though you get quicker as you go along correcting as the marking scheme becomes memorised.

It is quite stressful as there are deadlines for the Sample 20 scripts then the first 100, then the second 100 etc. There could be a change in the marking scheme once the Sample 20 are submitted and then you have to go back and re-correct all the papers you've done. There is no extra fee for this, no matter how many times it happens and often no extra time before you have to send in the next 100. You have to send random scripts to the Supervising Examiner throughout the correcting period and you'd have a path worn to the Post Office.

It is true that messy or illegible handwriting is a big drawback. If a corrector comes to a script at the end of a long day they may not be willing to spend time trying to decipher spidery or messy squiggles on a page.

JC 2K3

sd123 wrote:

not sure exactly how much they get paid but ive heard that not many teachers do it any more cos the money's supposed to be bad. most examiners are college students nowaday

Lol, that's so wrong.

Most MOCK CORRECTORS are college students. Not actual correctors.

Naikon

Have to agree there, you really think anybody can correct the exams?

spurious

The money has gone up considerably in recent years - probably because they had trouble getting people. It's still an activity that takes up a lot of time and I can't believe anyone does it for the money. I don't know how anyone would manage if they had to be minding kids too.

I think many correctors are like me and do it every so often to keep up with national standards and for professional development. Personally, I think it's something every teacher should be required to do at least once. I have heard colleagues tell kids stupid and obviously untrue 'facts' about how the exams are marked and have seen people on boards report nonsense that teachers have told them as 'true'. If we had a system where all teachers had been involved in correcting at least once, these 'facts' would disappear.

There are things could be changed of course, but for what it is, it's a good system I think.

eZe^

estebancambias wrote:

well its about a football match, so im presuming a male would be more interested

I really would recommend you to make a new essay man. My teacher is male and he says that the times of writing essays on sports and a good match we went too are well and truely over! I could be totally wrong though, and your essay could be amazing.

spurious

A well written essay will interest someone in a topic they don't find interesting.

eZe^

spurious wrote:

A well written essay will interest someone in a topic they don't find interesting.

I catered for that in the last sentence. Im just saying, I personally feel there is no point in limiting your target audience straight away without even putting pen to paper. If you can write and excellent essay on a football match then Im sure you can write an excellent essay on most subjects.

JC 2K3

spurious wrote:

I think many correctors are like me and do it every so often to keep up with national standards and for professional development. Personally, I think it's something every teacher should be required to do at least once. I have heard colleagues tell kids stupid and obviously untrue 'facts' about how the exams are marked and have seen people on boards report nonsense that teachers have told them as 'true'. If we had a system where all teachers had been involved in correcting at least once, these 'facts' would disappear.

Tell us this then and end the debate that went on here a while back. Are they/to what extent are they marked to a curve? Ie. are you only allowed give a certain amount of As, Bs etc. so that the results reflect a bell curve distribution?

spurious

Again, I can only speak for Junior Cert.
What happens is - all correctors correct a Sample 20 papers, taken at random from all the packs of papers you receive. These marks (and a selection of papers at pass/fail, d/c, c/b, b/a level) are sent to the supervising examiners who have a meeting.

They work out what the spread of marks will be and plot them. The aim is to have close to the bell shape on a distribution curve (I'm not very up on statistics and their analysis, sorry). If, say, there is a huge failure rate, then the marking scheme will be adjusted to 'allow' more people to pass. This could be done by adjusting marks - say in a 30 mark q they originally wanted 6 good points (SRSs in History) each worth 5 marks, they might adjust it to 5 each worth 6 marks. Likewise it can be adjusted if a crazy number of people are all getting A.

Efforts are made in advance to have papers and questions that allow for different scores. A yes or no or true or false question/answer is terrible - you either get the marks or you don't, but a yes or no and give a reason can add in a number of marks that not everyone will necessarily get 100% on. (Not sure I explained that well).

ZorbaTehZ

People need to be clearer about what they mean with regards this topic.
"Marking To A Curve" is assigning grade ranges based on the average distribution of grades in a class. It is used as a type of "quality control" (for want of a better word) in the cases of a test that is harder/easier than it should be. This isn't used in Ireland.
". . .so that the results reflect a bell curve distribution" is changing the marking schemes (like spurious described) so that it is a normal distribution. Two very very different things.

shazzyshaz

cool ya, yall kinda half answered my ques!!!