Understanding how assessments are marked is important for both tutors and learners. For many learners there are fine margins between passing and failing an assessment and understanding how to pick up additional marks could make the difference. For tutors, accurate marking of mock assessments gives a better understanding of how prepared learners are for live assessments. This blog will give guidance on how to mark our assessments like a pro to support your professional development and the development of your learners.
Support for Entry Level Functional Skills
Entry Level Functional Skills is internally assessed, which means understanding the mark schemes is important. Pearson always recommends having a robust internal verification process in place to support this. Check out our internal verification video for more support on this.
Internal Verification Video
In addition to this process, Pearson also provides guidance on marking Entry Level Functional Skills English Writing. This invaluable document looks specifically at the extended writing pieces in the assessment and provides support.
Marking Entry Level Functional Skills English Writing
Support for Level 1 and 2 Functional Skills English Writing
To support tutors with Level 1 and 2 writing, we have recently published two Principal Examiner’s Reports; one for Level 1 and one for Level 2.
Principal Examiner’s Report: Level 1 Writing
Principal Examiner’s Report: Level 2 Writing
As well as providing detail as to where learners go wrong in their writing assessments, these documents can help a tutor understand the process for marking Level 1 and 2 writing.
At Level 1 and 2 learners are expected to complete two pieces of writing; a longer and a shorter piece. The marking for both pieces is split into composition and SPaG. According to the Principal Examiner’s Report for Level 1, when looking at composition, there are four content statements against which markers assess learners’ responses.
- Communication of information, ideas and opinions for audience and purpose
- Format and structure for audience and purpose
- Use of sentences
- Use of vocabulary
The most important of these is communication. After the first read of a response, markers make an initial judgement as to whether the learner has the basic skills to communicate and express themselves clearly and coherently. If they don’t, they will be placed into the bottom band. If they do, then the question is, do they communicate with ‘reasonable’ clarity (middle band) or ‘effective’ clarity (top band). Once a decision has been made, the other three content statements are then used to decide where in the band the learner sits.
In order to achieve a mark in the middle or top bands, learners must read the task information and instructions very carefully to ensure that their responses are relevant; a few learners write with little reference to what they have been asked to do. Each of the bullet points in the Writing Task section should be addressed and there needs to be evidence of complex as well as correctly constructed simple sentences. A learner will rarely achieve a mark above lower middle band without any sentence demarcation. Syntax plays a significant part in marking decisions. A learner with a number of grammatical errors but with good syntactical ability can still be awarded marks at the top of the middle band and possibly higher, depending on the accuracy of spelling and punctuation. If syntax is good, this improves the clarity of the response. It is still coherent even with the other grammatical errors.
When awarding a mark for spelling, punctuation and grammar, markers make a ‘best fit’ judgment using the descriptors so that weakness in one area can be balanced against strengths in another. The most common issues at Level 1 include:
- Grammar: first language interference and errors in syntax control is evident in many responses. This results in a lot of words in the wrong order, missing words, incorrect verb patterns, inconsistent use of tenses and a lack of control over articles.
- Lack of full stops
- Insecurity about when to use full stops or commas
- A lot of comma splicing
- Use of possessive apostrophes is weak
- No capitals or in the wrong place in the middle of sentences
- Was/were confusion
- Them/those confusion
- Misuse of you/your/you’re
- Uncapitalised first person ‘I’s, especially with on-screen papers.
- Misuse/spelling of common homophones
- Confusion with they/there eg. they are some people who…
- Text language being used eg. u, bc (because)
It is important that candidates allocate some time to proof-reading their responses after they complete them. This is very important when candidates are typing their responses as this can lead to typographical errors as well as standard spelling mistakes.
Support for Functional Skills Maths
It is important to understand mark scheme and how questions are asked in the assessments. To do this, let’s take a look at some of the questions and mark schemes from our You Are The Assessor series.
Level 1
Looking at the mark scheme, you can see on this question the correct answer gains full marks. The use of the word or in the mark section, shows that the learner can pick up either one or two marks while getting the final answer wrong. In fact, they can pick up one mark for knowing how to work out percentages, without being able to do it.
The 'oe' in the mark scheme stands for “or equivalent” and means the examiner can accept any other workable method for this answer.
This second Level 1 question shows how important the decision is on a decision question. A learner needs both the decision and the mathematical answers to be able to access the full first three marks. In this question, as in the first, the learner can get the full marks without showing any working out (as long as they are correct). However, because there is a further mark for a reverse calculation, the learner needs to show some working in order to be able to access that mark.
Level 2
Here we have the first Level 2 maths question we used.
This is six-mark question and the first thing we should notice is this requires that the working out is shown by the candidate. No working out will mean the candidate is not able to access full marks. The mark scheme also shows that the marking is broken down into three parts. This can potentially be used by a tutor to scaffold this question, providing support for the learner. For me, it is interesting that there is a full mark on offer for 100 – 90 = (10). Elements such as this can easily be missed by learners.
You Are The Assessor
At the time of writing this blog, we are on week 6 of You Are The Assessor on LinkedIn. You can easily access these by following me: Christopher Briggs - Product Manager - Post 16 English, Maths & Digital Skillsg BTEC Product Management. The following week these resources then appear on the Pearson Functional Skills Resources pages.
The following questions are already live:
These resources are invaluable for tutors and learners. They give much more clarity into the way that assessments are marked and, from feedback online, are helping people understand what needs to be done to achieve marks (and not just full marks). They mark for a useful exercise for standardising marking for tutors and, particularly the maths, are a great activity for use in class to encourage learners to accurately mark their own and their peers’ work.
You Are The Assessor will be continuing throughout the summer on LinkedIn. Join me there to access the resources and to practice your marking skills.
By Chris Briggs | Product Manager - Post 16 English, Maths & Digital Skills
