Getting your students to mark GCSE exam questions and papers can help them to really understand what a good exam response looks like, giving them confidence when their time comes in the exam hall. Jessica Richards explains


Sharing success criteria and perfectly modelled answers is advocated in many teaching and learning handbooks, but what about turning your students into budding GCSE exam markers?

Spending time on exploring the meaning of assessment objectives and their use within the marking criteria is worth the effort if students are able to self and peer-assess each other's work with examiner scrutiny.

As an English teacher, marking essay responses is always a bit of a subjective job and when moderating across a department it becomes even clearer that mark schemes require interpretation.

If you teach a traditional arts subject, which in the exam requires longer response answers, then it is likely that the marking becomes less about spotting the right answer and more about interpreting the response in relation to the marking criteria. This is what I like to refer to as the critical eye.

Often within a paragraph of an exam answer, several assessment objectives can be rewarded at once and therefore understanding the mark scheme fluently is crucial. If this skill can be shared with students the enigma of applying the mark scheme becomes much clearer.


The benefits of creating student exam markers

Students understand exactly what is being assessed: Often, students have only a vague idea of what is expected of them in exams and assessments and, as a result, they may not perform as well as they could. By learning how to mark papers themselves, students become more familiar with the criteria used by examiners and what meeting these criteria looks like on paper, which can help them to identify areas where they may need to improve.

Students become better at self-assessment: Learning to mark can help students to develop their own critical eye when it comes to reviewing their own responses. By learning to mark papers and assessing them against the mark scheme, students learn to spot mistakes and weaknesses in their own writing. This can be a valuable tool in helping students to improve their own work, as they can identify areas where they need to improve and focus their efforts accordingly.

Promotes a sense of responsibility and ownership for their own learning: When students are given the opportunity to assess their own and their peers’ work, they become more invested in the process and are more likely to take it seriously. This can lead to a greater sense of pride in their own work and a desire to do better in future assessments.

Promotes articulation and precise communication skills: Through students having to explain their thinking clearly and concisely, they naturally have to consider how they articulate their words. This level of critical thinking, problem-solving and attention to detail are key skills that are highly valued in education and the workplace so are advantageous to students.

Lightens the teacher load: Of course, teachers can also benefit, as it can help to lighten your workload and improve your own understanding of the mark scheme. When students are able to mark their own and their peers’ work, teachers can focus their attention on other aspects, such as tackling common misconceptions, lesson planning, or one-on-one support for struggling students. Additionally, by working closely with their students in this way, teachers can gain a deeper insight into their strengths and weaknesses, which can help them to tailor their teaching more effectively.

The wider school community: What works in one classroom and one subject area can often be shared across the corridors and this can really help build a culture of challenge as well as consistency across the school. I have found that students engage more in the learning process when they can see how they can be awarded marks; they become more invested in the success of their peers when they are responsible for giving feedback on the work of others. This can help to foster a sense of community and collaboration within the school, which can have a positive impact on academic outcomes and student wellbeing.


Implementation

The old adage “you must practise what you preach” comes to mind. The first step to instil student exam marking as a culture in your classroom starts with you as the teacher becoming an exam marker too. You may be interested to read my recent article: Exam board marking and moderation: Is it for you?

However, if that is too much in terms of workload then you could simply book yourself onto some exam board training or failing that spend some time looking through examiner reports, which provide a commentary on how past exam series have been received by students and evaluate the marking process. Most exam boards also provide exemplar student responses with examiner commentaries on what mark it was awarded and why.


Understanding marks vs grades

While the standard of marking will not vary much from year to year, the standard of student responses does vary, and this impacts the grade boundary decisions at the end of the marking series.

Emphasising this is useful when sharing mark schemes with pupils and responding to the inevitable questions about what mark is what grade.

At exam board level you are always reminded to mark to the mark scheme and not to a hypothetical grade – the grades change but the mark scheme levels do not.


Get out your red pens

Once you and the students are happy with the meaning of the mark scheme criteria then it is time to break out the red pens and highlighters. Applying the mark scheme to many different responses across a range of abilities is crucial to understanding how student responses are awarded marks.

Colour-coding the mark scheme per bullet point or assessment objective and then identifying points in the response that meet this criterion provides a clear representation for students to see where a response wins marks.


Interpreting longer responses

The next step is then pitching the level. For longer responses, the mark scheme will likely move from limited, to some, to clear, to developed, and usually perceptive or sophisticated. This as I referred to earlier requires the markers to interpret the responses in relation to the criteria.

My team leaders and principal examiners have always told me to start in the middle: Is the response clear? Is it showing a sound understanding? If so then begin to work upwards. If not begin to look down the criteria.

As with examiners, this will be where students begin to feel the challenge of pitching the level and then even more challenging pitching the mark. Use coaching questions to test their thinking and make them reflect on the response in front of them.

  • Is it meeting all the bullet points in the level or just some of them?
  • Does it feel secure in the level?
  • Is it beginning to show enough development or detail to move it just into the next level?

Of course, having a bank of the model exemplar responses comes into its own here as these assist in comparing like for like.

  • Is the response you are marking similar in content and depth to reach the same marks as the exemplar?

However, a word of caution: responses can reach the same mark through different routes, and this will be clear in examiner commentaries and training.


Final thoughts

The most significant thing for your exam classes is that students are able to articulate why the response received the mark it is has and provide constructive feedback to their peers on what would be the next steps to improve the response.

Finally, teaching your students to be markers should not detract from other aspects of learning. It is important to strike a balance between teaching students how to mark responses effectively and providing them with the knowledge they need to apply in exam answers. Exam answers should not become a tick-box exercise but a chance for students to show off their understanding of the topic.

While marking responses may not be everyone's cup of tea, I like to think of it as a kind of intellectual workout. You are flexing your brain muscles, honing your critical thinking skills, and (hopefully) burning off some of those exam-day nerves.