Exam marking process

About exam marking process

Around 5,500 experienced Year 12 teachers work as HSC markers each year. They are appointed by the NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA).

Supervisors of Marking are responsible for the overall marking process for a course or part of the exam. Senior markers lead teams of markers. Teams generally look after a single question or small section of a paper. This means that on average, 8 different markers will mark a student's exam.

Marking guidelines

The Examination Committee develops marking guidelines according to set principles. All markers use these marking guidelines to award marks to ensure fairness and consistency.

The marking guidelines clearly describe characteristics of responses in each mark range.

Markers train in how to apply the marking guidelines, and their work is monitored for quality assurance purposes.

Practice marking

Each team:

• attends training sessions and receives briefings on how to apply the marking guidelines consistently to student responses
• discusses typical responses at different mark levels to get clear understanding of how to apply the marking guidelines
• practice marks a variety of responses to demonstrate that each marker can apply the marking guidelines consistently.

Senior markers review the actual marks and pattern of marks from each marker during practice marking.

Practice marking continues until senior markers are confident that their teams are applying the marking kit accurately and consistently.

Marking

Question types are assessed according to marking practices.

Short-response questions

Short-response questions ask for responses that are:

• one word or number
• 1 or 2 pages of writing or mathematical work.

A single marker generally marks a short-response question. 

To make sure that a team has marked the responses consistently, senior markers use:

• check marking
• common scripts
• statistical reports.

Extended-response questions

Two or more markers will mark an extended-response question. Extended responses include:

• essays
• creative writing
• projects and performances.

In double marking, two markers independently assign marks to the same response. If their marks differ considerably, the response is referred to a senior marker to resolve.

Atypical responses

For valid atypical responses, the senior marker and supervisor of marking will allocate marks.

For non-serious responses, senior markers may allocate zero marks for that response.

For offensive responses, senior markers will refer the matter to the supervisor of marking.

Significant matters are referred to NESA’s Examination Rules Committee where cases are considered for students who might have broken the exam rules.

Excessively long responses

Students who write excessively long responses limit their time for answering other questions. In this way, they penalise themselves.

Some exams also limit students’ work to a certain size, length of time or number of words. Responses that exceed these limits may not achieve the full range of marks.

Ensuring consistency

Senior markers monitor marking teams to ensure the marking guidelines is correctly and consistently applied.

This includes the following processes.

• Check marking: reviewing a sample of each marker's work to check they agree with the marks awarded.
• Common script marking: asking everyone in the team to mark the same response, then reviewing their marks for major differences.
• Statistical reports: checking each marker's pattern of marks in a session.

If these processes reveal inconsistencies in a marker’s work, that person is re-briefed.

Supervisors of marking also use statistical reports to monitor the marking operation.

Total exam marks

Once marking is complete, we calculate a total exam mark for each student in each examined course. To do this we add the marks for each question or task. This addition happens after weighting and optional question scaling.

Optional question scaling

 For exams with optional questions, we might adjust these initial raw marks to compensate for the difficulty of the optional questions compared to the compulsory part of the exam.

This process, called ‘optional question scaling’, ensures you are not unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged by choosing an easier or more difficult optional question.

Weighting exam questions

On rare occasions an exam question or task is marked out of a different value to what it is actually worth.

For example, in Music 1, the Aural Skills exam is marked out of 20 and that exam is also worth 20% of the total. On the other hand, each of the 4 practical tasks is marked out of 20 but is worth 17.5%. Therefore, we apply a weighting factor to convert the practical raw marks out of 20 to weighted marks out of 17.5.

Evaluating the marking process

NESA reviews the marking process every year. We do this for auditing/accountability purposes, and to ensure continual improvement. When marking is complete, NESA officers evaluate the process for:

• training
• management
• issues with exam papers or marking guidelines
• quality control processes
• reliability
• logistics
• resources and appointments
• handling of special cases.

NESA also engages external auditors to review the calculations that we made in each year's HSC exam process.