How does the OCR exam board GCSE examiner mark coursework?
The teacher marks the coursework. The Head of Department standardises marks to ensure they are consistent across teachers and submits the marks to the exam board. A sample (e.g. 10 projects) is then sent to an external moderator. If the subject has very few entries they may all be requested. The sample is of the exam board’s choosing and it will always include the highest and lowest mark. The moderator then looks at a sub-sample. this may be just three projects, usually the highest mark, the lowest mark and one other at random. If he agrees with the marking of the school, the marks are then unaltered. If he thinks the work has not been marked correctly, he will look at all the sampled work and then apply an adjustment which will alter the marks of all candidates, even those whose work has not been seen by the moderator.
