Janis Burdin says the marking scheme for the controversial exams is in meltdown.
The paper written by 'child A' received one mark more overall than the paper by 'child B.'
The discrepancy has so enraged Mrs Burdin that she is demanding they are remarked - along with other exams written by her pupils.
Mrs Burdin, of Moss Side Primary School in Leyland, Lancs, will not release the results for the English writing paper because she says the children would be 'mortified'.
But with her consent, and that of the parents of both children, the papers have been released anonymously to highlight the problems with the system.
Mrs Burdin said: "These two papers were both given a Level 4. If I'd been marking I would have given one a 5 and one a 3. These are the most extreme differences but there are many more discrepancies. The whole thing seems random. I would have expected a third of our pupils to get Level 5 but only one did. In 2003 we got re-marks on all the English papers and eight grades were changed. This time it's worse. It's absolutely pathetic. I can't tell you how cross I am."
The Writing Paper consisted of a longer and shorter piece, and the marks were broken down into elements such as sentence structure and handwriting.
For the longer script, child A wrote: "If he wasent doing enthing els heel help his uncle Herry at the funfair during the day. And had stoody at nigh" .
Child B wrote: "Quickly, it became apparent that Pip was a fantastic rider: a complete natural. But it was his love of horses that led to a tragic accident. An accident that would change his life forever."
Despite a clear difference in ability, both children were awarded five marks out of a possible eight for sentence structure.
Child A received eight marks out of 12 for composition and effect, whereas child B only received seven marks.
Off the radar
Mrs Burdin added: "The marking, especially for the writing exams, is absolutely off the radar it is that bad. We've spent hours looking at this wondering what to do. From what I've heard the training of the markers has been unsatisfactory. We got our papers back last week but we are not releasing the writing exam results - the children would be mortified if they saw what they got."
Year six children sit three English, three mathematics and two science papers. Grades are used to put the 10 and 11-year-olds into sets when they start high school, but due to the nationwide marking crisis, thousands will start next term without their scores.
Mrs Burdin also hit out at the administration of the exams.
"It has been an absolute fiasco from day one. The new system is all online yet it went down straight away after the first exam on May 12 and when every school in the country rang the helpline - that crashed too."
She added: "I will pursue this until they are sent back and remarked. The children and staff work really hard and we rise and fall by our SATS - it is the first thing that an Ofsted inspection looks at."
Teachers' leaders are already up-in-arms over the decision to award the £156m marking contract to Educational Testing Service Europe.
Errors include system crashes, helpline overloads and software problems, followed by delays. Some schools have still not received their results.
Ken Boston, chief executive of the Qualification and Curriculum Authority, said: "The papers have been marked largely by the same people who marked test papers last year and in previous years - teachers and other experienced local markers who know and understand curriculum, schools and standards in England.
"Markers were trained by senior examiners. Markers who had drifted from the standard were given further training or had their work terminated, and their papers were remarked. This was a more rigorous process than last year." Tweet
Comments
Login or Register to comment
Ken Boston wants to get out into the schools and stop listening to ETS (Europe) the American company who have allegedly had people marking these papers. If he talked to teachers he might get a truer picture.
I actually heard Ken Boston make a statement about this company along the lines of them (ETS) not realising the "local differences" between England and the USA as if England were another state of the USA!
Let's hope the Sutherland inquiry gets to the bottom of this and sacks ETS.
Talk to the people who have been markers for years but because of the chaos this year have given up. From the unsuitable training, to the markers who were employed to mark English and were sent Science papers to mark and the failure of the ETS computer systems, to the markers who have had papers left on their doorsteps, it has been more than a fiasco.
There are schools who have received their papers back unmarked, schools who have received the papers/results for other schools but not their own.
This firm should not be paid and Ken Boston and his cronies should be sacked.
great.
Why should UK's exam papers be marked by an USA company. In fact, why any exam papers be marked by any company? Are they teachers moonlighting??
This is an absolute disgrace. The SATs are totally pointless at the best of times, but this is just the icing on the cake.
It does beg the question as to the quality of the marking in all exams too. Who's to say that GCSE and A-Level papers aren't marked to an equally bad standard?
An American company are marking our education exam papers you couldn’t make it up
They spell words differently to us has no one told the education authorities this.
Example Colour (English) Color (American) Neighbour (English) Neighbor (American)
a totally different education culture. They say apartment we say flat they say diaper we say nappy but the biggest insult to our language is the word soccer instead of football they talk and spell differently.
How has this company become involved in our education system were they the cheapest, you get what you pay for.
Will the government hold ETS to account for their failure to mark the SATS papers on time and accurately? Clearly not, they'll just explain it away as minor difficulties which will be overcome by next year.
It show how bad things are as ETS have had to resort to using teenagers, who have just finished their 'A' levels, to finish marking the scripts.
This is still the government's responsibility regardless of the contractor they have chosen and they should be held to account. It is interesting from hearing interviews with ministers that there has not yet been the vaguest of suggestions that ETS may loose their contract merely that they will hopefully do better next year.
Well done Ed Balls!