Information for examiners and moderators

What the role involves

Information for examiners and moderators, plus their team leaders and assistant lead examiners and moderators, about what the role involves and what we need from you.

More information about the systems you'll use is available in our Tools and PC requirements section.

Who you'll work with

You'll be part of a team, led by a more senior examiner or moderator. Your team leader will give you support and guidance on meeting the marking standard. Keep in regular contact with them during the marking period, and let them know straight away if you have any problems.

Before standardisation

Before you take part in standardisation, you'll need to complete your onboarding activities – this includes declaring your conflicts of interest and watching compliance training. For more information about these activities, see our Getting started page.

Before you move onto the next stage, we’ll also make practice exam papers or questions available to you. We’ll let you know once they are available and we recommend that you mark these so that you feel ready to move into standardisation.

Standardisation

Standardisation is where we train you to mark to the required standard. Standardisation is either:

• online, and accessible during the time period shown on your contract offer
• face-to-face. You'll need to arrange your own travel and accommodation as per our guidelines.

How much you'll mark (quota)

The "standard quota" is the number of student answers we'll aim to allocate to you to mark. It will be made up of questions (referred to as items), whole exam papers (referred to as scripts), or centres.

Your standard quota is shown on your contract. However, the actual amount we allocate to you (which will be shown in the system at the start of the marking period) may be slightly different to this. This is because of changes to the number of entries, students who change tier, students who are absent on the day, or whether scripts can be scanned.

We can't guarantee that we'll be able to fill your standard quota, but we will allocate a quota as close to the standard as possible.

Marking

After you've completed standardisation, you can move on to live marking.

You must mark in line with the marking standard that the lead examiner or moderator sets for the component. The mark scheme or assessment criteria will demonstrate the standard, and we'll give you detailed instructions during standardisation.

To ensure the right quality of marking, your work will be monitored by senior examiners or moderators during and after the marking period. If you had been cleared to mark live materials, but are asked to stop marking for quality reasons, we'll pay you for the marking you've completed. If you are marking paper scripts you may need to provide samples to your team leader.

Reporting marking issues

If a student has numbered questions incorrectly, or their response answers a different question to the one you're marking, you must escalate this in line with our marking instructions.

Deadlines

To ensure we award the right results on results day, we need our associates to maintain a steady pace throughout the marking period. To help you to understand whether you’re on track during the marking period, we recommend that you make a note of the final date for marks and progress deadlines that are in your contract.

We know that many of our examiners are also full-time teachers and have family commitments also, which means marking consistently every day can become tricky. Whilst we understand you have these other responsibilities, we may phone, email or write to you if you seem to be falling behind.

To help us stay on track if you're marking paper scripts, we ask that you return them to us at each batch date.

Where we identify that an examiner or moderator is struggling to meet their deadlines, and we are concerned that one individual cannot make up the lost time, we may need to reallocate some or all of the marking. In those cases, payment would be made only for the marking already completed.

Additional support during standardisation and marking

If you need any additional support during the marking period, reach out to your allocated team leader or check the associate extranet for additional content.

Team leaders and assistant leads

If you're a team leader or an assistant lead, you will also need to complete the following:

• provide support for your team during the marking period
• support the team with the introduction of new technology in AQA exams
• prepare for and attend pre-standardisation and/or seeding meetings where required, including the selection of practice, standardisation and seeding items at home or in meetings
• support the standardisation of your team by making yourself available to give advice, and provide assistance to the lead examiner or moderator as required. If you're an assistant lead examiner or moderator, you may be asked to lead a full standardisation meeting
• supervise and scrutinise by sampling or monitoring the marking standard of each member of your team in line with the marking standard set by the lead examiner or moderator. Make sure the clearing and restarting of examiners is prompt and in line with published marking dates
• where requested, submit a brief report to the lead examiner or moderator on the scripts/items/centres marked, and/or the standardisation process
• carry out re-marking, including attending a marking review meeting if required.

Assistant lead examiners and moderators may also be required to:

• prepare for and deliver training for new examiners or moderators
• prepare a final version of the mark scheme for submission to the lead examiner/moderator
• prepare for and attend the awarding meeting, and help set grade boundaries.