EXam Marking

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The life of an AAT exam paper

We take you through what happens to your exam paper

It is mid-June 2005, time for the AAT exams. But when do you think the exam was written?
Well, chief assessor Karen Boyd revealed that the June exam started life about 14 to 15 months before – in March 2004 to be precise.
Once written, the paper is sent to a moderator, to ensure it is technically correct and the right length. That takes about a month, explained Boyd, and there is a bit of negotiating at this stage.
The guinea pigs are then brought in! These are usually newly qualified AATs and they are paid to sit the exam. About five or six students will sit each paper.
Some tweaks later it goes before the Exam Panel. Here the chief assessor sits down with academics and practitioners who go over every paper. This process can take up to three days and every paper is 'worked'. All the papers are looked at together to make sure they 'fit' and Bob Thomas looks at the language to make sure overseas students are not disadvantaged.
Only then is the final version of the paper produced. That still means that the June paper is 'ready to go' over a year before the exam date.
The June exam paper is printed at the beginning of the year, around January to March time. For the chief assessor, who has been working on other things, it is six to seven months since they last saw it – so they come to it fresh again.
The June exams come and go and then the hard work of marking begins. Each individual exam paper has a team of examiners (one AAT paper is 30 strong!).
Before any papers are marked there is a markers' meeting. The markers look at 10 to 20 individual papers, and over a day the marking scheme is agreed. Markers then get three to four weeks to do the marking. Results are entered electronically into the system.
The next stage is the Exam Review Panel meeting. This looks at any problem areas. Each marker sends a report with their marks and the panel with the chief assessor picks through the reports and looks at all comments from centres.
Once the competence level has been agreed the examiners review borderline cases. Boyd stressed that every borderline case is reviewed by the chief assessor. On big papers, however, the chief moderator can also get involved as these cases can number hundreds.
Results are released in August and this triggers off the appeals! The appeals procedure is taken very seriously. Boyd says she first scans the individuals paper to ensure there hasn't been a marking error, these she admitted were very rare indeed. Each student then gets a report from the chief assessor, up to two pages long, showing the candidate where they went wrong. And that is it.
So, a typical exam is born and dies in under 20 months. Each chief assessor is also physically handling four exams at the same time.
What Boyd wanted to stress at the annual conference was the lengths that the AAT and examiners goes to ensure fair and professional exams are produced.


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