Pres (mocks) do you correct your own?

dory

We send all ours away. It's the way it's always been done and I don't mind. I like getting someone else's opinion on my students' work. My department send them all to a guy who is an experienced department corrector.

muteswan

Got mine done already - 120 in total.

Don't know what all the fuss is about.

r93kaey5p2izun

I think that it is part of our job to correct unless parents want to pay for independent marking. I don't agree with making parents pay for mocks or corrections but if it's mutually agreed then fair enough. That said I think the workload can be huge for many teachers (depending on subject and number of class groups) and getting an outside view of standards would be helpful. In my school results must be in just four days after the final exam and that can be stressful. I also don't feel I get any more insight from correctng mocks than from correcting tests and exam questions so I personally wouldn't see that as a reason to oppose sending out corrections.

We must do our own corrections because of poor experiences with outside companies in terms of quality of corrections and delays in getting scripts back. We buy in papers but this must come out of subject department budget.

implausible

muteswan wrote: »

Got mine done already - 120 in total.

Don't know what all the fuss is about.

The fuss is around whether teachers see it as part of their job or not and if they are used to doing it. If you work in a school where they are all sent off, I can see how it sounds like a mammoth task.

Many teachers like the idea of an external eye over their students and that is perfectly reasonable, but my issue is that the people who mark them are often underpaid and inexperienced and in that case, the teacher is as well off marking them his/herself, even with his/her biased view of the students.

It matters less in some subjects than others, but in my subject, English, given the choice between sending them off to someone inexperienced and marking them myself, I'd chose myself. I'm lucky that I have someone experienced to swap with and I think, especially in schools where cost is an issue, swapping is something that should be promoted as the ideal compromise between external marking and cost.

katydid

Chase Some Flab wrote: »

I think that it is part of our job to correct unless parents want to pay for independent marking.

But the mocks are something that is not part of the school curriculum. They are additional voluntary exams facilitated by the school. It's no more your job to correct them, surely, than it is to run the school debating team?

seavill

Chase Some Flab wrote: »

We must do our own corrections because of poor experiences with outside companies in terms of quality of corrections and delays in getting scripts back. We buy in papers but this must come out of subject department budget.

Thats a bit mental

Inspector Coptoor

I corrected my own mocks.
~20 papers.
5 hours work or so.
Grand.

Other teachers send them away.

katydid

Inspector Coptoor wrote: »

I corrected my own mocks.
~20 papers.
5 hours work or so.
Grand.

Other teachers send them away.

That's alright if you have only 20

r93kaey5p2izun

seavill wrote: »

Thats a bit mental

Well it's a DEIS school. Charging students is out of the question. Departments could choose to make their own (a few do and certainly LCA options where no papers available) but otherwise where would the money come from?

implausible

seavill wrote: »

Thats a bit mental

Why? In some schools, getting money off the students can be nearly impossible. They're probably saving a lot of grief by taking the paper out the subject budget.

Inspector Coptoor

katydid wrote: »

That's alright if you have only 20

Yeah, true.

I'll have close to 60 JC papers to do in April, but again, I'll do them myself. I seeming as a long class test

implausible

katydid wrote: »

But the mocks are something that is not part of the school curriculum. They are additional voluntary exams facilitated by the school. It's no more your job to correct them, surely, than it is to run the school debating team?

Are there schools in the country who do not do mock exams? Debating is voluntary on a student by student basis; mocks are not. Some schools don't run Christmas exams because the mocks are so soon after, they are equivalent to an extended house exam and are regarded as such in most schools.

katydid

implausible wrote: »

Are there schools in the country who do not do mock exams? Debating is voluntary on a student by student basis; mocks are not. Some schools don't run Christmas exams because the mocks are so soon after, they are equivalent to an extended house exam and are regarded as such in most schools.

I'm sure they all do them. But the fact remains that they are a choice made by the school outside of the norms of the curriculum, for the specific purpose of preparing students for the exam. The school facilitates them.

They may have become the equivalent to a house exam but that's a different matter.

Bobsammy

We have to correct up to 60 papers and anything in excess of that can be sent out. I think this is a fair way of doing it.

I'm not sure how the cost is met as students aren't charged per paper sent out but the cost must be built in somewhere.

I didn't send any out this year as I've no Junior Cert class so didn't hit 60.

seavill

katydid wrote: »

That's alright if you have only 20

Yea true I would have had nearly 100 this year

Meangadh

Thank God we send ours away. I sometimes have up to 4 exam classes and because I teach Irish, there are two papers, an aural and an oral (at LC level). It would be absolute torture to have to do that much correcting and to be honest it would interfere with all the other work I need to be doing to prepare for classes and I wouldn't be correcting one single thing other than the mocks for a few weeks whilst I was trying to get through that mountain of work.

I totally understand the money thing, but I think if it's any way feasible at all (and I know unfortunately in many schools it isn't), they should be sent away. I don't see it as part of our job- I do enough correcting as it is to know what level my students are at. Let someone else do it and I'll happily take the feedback.

seavill

Chase Some Flab wrote: »

Well it's a DEIS school. Charging students is out of the question. Departments could choose to make their own (a few do and certainly LCA options where no papers available) but otherwise where would the money come from?

implausible wrote: »

Why? In some schools, getting money off the students can be nearly impossible. They're probably saving a lot of grief by taking the paper out the subject budget.

It was the part about taking it from a department budget I was surprised at. not the fact that students couldn't afford it.
However your second post about having the option to make your own paper clears that up slightly

painauchocolat

Ours must be corrected in-house. No one enjoys it, but it's accepted that for many of the kids it would be too expensive to send them away. (DEIS school)

evolving_doors

painauchocolat wrote: »

Ours must be corrected in-house. No one enjoys it, but it's accepted that for many of the kids it would be too expensive to send them away. (DEIS school)

can you swop with another teacher outside the school?

I think it should be left to the teachers decide (with due consideration for student finances etc.).

Depends on the subject too.. some of the solutions can be fairly straight down the middle and other subjects can be a bit trickier. Also some students can get a bit of a wake up call when its an outsider correcting (as obviously you have it in for em )

I prefer to adjust the companies exams to focus on certain things I want to.

rainbowtrout

implausible wrote: »

Are there schools in the country who do not do mock exams? Debating is voluntary on a student by student basis; mocks are not. Some schools don't run Christmas exams because the mocks are so soon after, they are equivalent to an extended house exam and are regarded as such in most schools.

Yes, I know of a school in my part of the country that doesn't do them. I've encountered one or two students over the years from that school that have got mock papers from my school for practice in their own time.

gubbie

I do not envy paper marking, especially for those poor souls in English.

In my old school (UK) the mocks were always corrected in school and we had countless meetings teaching us how to correct - from correcting sample questions, to remarking a number of papers from a colleague and to scrutinising what was in the marking scheme.

For everyone correcting, fair dues to you.

freshpopcorn

Well, I'm speaking from a students point of view I really liked getting my exams corrected externaly.(I'm out of school a good few years) I never even even knew that some schools corrected them themselves.
It just felt like the real thing to me. You also knew that there was going to be no favoritism from teachers and the result you got was fair. Students also couldn't say such and such marked me down because they hate me or they marked him up for whatever reason.

painauchocolat

Gebgbegb wrote: »

can you swop with another teacher outside the school?

Not that I'm aware of. Could just be that no one has asked. Some departments swop between themselves but this really only works when there are two exam classes of comparable size /level. For most subjects we'd have only the one class.

byhookorbycrook

freshpopcorn wrote: »

Well, I'm speaking from a students point of view I really liked getting my exams corrected externaly.(I'm out of school a good few years) I never even even knew that some schools corrected them themselves.
It just felt like the real thing to me. You also knew that there was going to be no favoritism from teachers and the result you got was fair. Students also couldn't say such and such marked me down because they hate me or they marked him up for whatever reason.

Which is why the whole Junior Cert issue is being so stoutly defended by teachers.

katydid

byhookorbycrook wrote: »

Which is why the whole Junior Cert issue is being so stoutly defended by teachers.

Because some students don't trust their teachers?

evolving_doors

katydid wrote: »

Because some students don't trust their teachers?

I would say yes.

katydid

Gebgbegb wrote: »

I would say yes.

Not a reason to scrap an entire system. Students will have to learn to trust teachers and teachers will have to learn to trust themselves.

Noccy_Mondy

Does every thread really need to turn into one about JC reform?

implausible

katydid wrote: »

Students will have to learn to trust teachers and teachers will have to learn to trust themselves.

By marking their own mocks?

evolving_doors

katydid wrote: »

Not a reason to scrap an entire system. Students will have to learn to trust teachers and teachers will have to learn to trust themselves.

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