Liz Brockelhurst, who marked Key stage 2 papers for a decade, has done a great piece for the magazine this week on the marking process for Sats. She points out that the “marking process itself was also dictated by idiotic rules, designed to help children scrape through.”
Two of the examples that Liz gives, illustrate just how rigged the whole mark scheme is:
“And if the child wrote the correct answer, but then, on second thoughts, decided it was wrong and crossed it out, the crossing-out still gained the mark. On one paper this was carried to ludicrous extremes. A child had written an answer in pencil but then rubbed it out so I had not awarded any mark. My supervisor, however, insisted that because the slight imprint of the erased answer suggested it had been correct, I must award the point.
Correct spelling was completely irrelevant — to the point of absurdity.
Britain’s best politics newsletters
You get two free articles each week when you sign up to The Spectator’s emails.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate, free for a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first month free.
UNLOCK ACCESS Try a month freeAlready a subscriber? Log in