As thousands of Scots pupils are due to receive their exam results this morning our education writer James McEnaney looks at how the grades are decided upon
After the disruption of the last few years, and with the main appeals avenue now closed off by the Scottish Qualifications Authority, there is more interest than ever in the process used to award grades for National 5s, Highers and Advanced Highers. How does it actually work, and is it fair?
The key point to understand is the difference between the marking process and the grading process. People generally (and entirely understandably) assume that they are the same thing, and that the person marking an exam paper is also issuing a grade. This is not correct.
The job of the marker is fairly straightforward: they read through an exam paper, judge each question against the marking scheme, and then award the number of marks that they believe a student should receive. At the end of the process all of those marks are added up to provide a final score out of the total marks available.
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The marker does not, however, award a grade – that happens afterwards.
Marks are awarded based purely on the exam paper, marking guide and student response. They are focused entirely on the performance of the young person within the terms of the task they have been set – in this case, a final exam.
Grades are different.
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They are not determined only by the performance of the student in question – they also depend upon the performance of every other student. Grades are, in effect, relative.
The grade you receive depends upon the ‘grade boundaries’, which are best understood in terms of a percentage of the total available marks. Lots of people assume these to be set and static: 50% for a C, 60% for a B and 70% for an A. Those are the typical grade boundaries, and provide a sort of starting point for understanding this process, but that doesn’t mean that they are set in stone.
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So in 2019, for example, 67% got you an A for Higher English (where it represented 67 of the 100 marks available) or Chemistry (101 marks from a total 150) or Art (174 marks from a total of 260), but in Accounting you needed 73% (132 marks out of a total of 180) to get a top grade.
Decisions on grade boundaries, and therefore grade distributions and national-level outcomes, are made not by individual markers but rather at special meetings. Grade boundaries can – and do – change every single year, and be different in every single subject.
At those meetings (one is held for each subject and level) officials decide if an exam has performed ‘as expected’ using information like national-level results data and feedback from examiners.
If an exam paper has, it turns out, been too hard or too easy, as determined by the final results that it is going to generate, then the grade boundaries are adjusted to compensate. If the data is going to fall outside of an expected or acceptable range then grade boundaries are redrawn to correct the problem. These are choices that have to be made.
To put it even more bluntly: if not enough, or too many, students manage to pass, or if the spread of grades is too different from previous years, then the goalposts are moved in order to influence the final result.
The marking process is concerned only with how well a student has performed; the grading process, on the other hand, is concerned with what the overall outcomes look like.
This year the SQA claims to have been ‘sensitive to the challenges learners have faced throughout the year’ and that they worked ‘to ensure all factors had been fully considered before grades are finalised.’
Did you get the grades you wanted? How have you been affected by the exam results? Do you think the grading is fair?
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