TRANSCRIPT:
 

You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode 119 - 5 things you probably didn’t know about external exams - how they work, how they’re marked -and how your teen can turn them to their advantage

Hey VIP’s! How’s things?! I hope you and your teens are really well.

I am on a high and low right now - both from hitting the end of the external exam marking. A low, because it is pretty exhausting, and I’m literally recording this the evening after the morning of getting to the end of the queue of papers and am looking forward to an early night and before that a glass of wine and some TV which I have not done at all for 10 days since I started. And a high because it’s been SUCH a useful experience - with so many take-aways I really want to share with you and your teens - which leads me to- a couple of announcements I want to make before we dive into the episode:

First - if you’re here listening to this episode because you really want to help your teen with how they approach, prep for and perform in their exams. Either technically in terms of their exam technique, or mentally in terms of reducing their stress and anxiety, then I have a special - and free - event that you’ll definitely want to attend.

It’s my 2024 Crack the Exam Code webinar and I’m delivering it LIVE on Wednesday 27th November - 2024. So if you’re listening before then, or even before Monday the 2nd December when the replay will be available until, be sure to get in on this - it’s totally free - at www.gradetransformation.com/code

This event has become a bit of an annual tradition now as I share my discoveries, insights and tips from the round of external exam marking I’ve just completed and complete each year for external exam boards. I always include new and hot-off-the-press info, concepts and insights relating to the specific issues and real life examples I’ve seen and experienced and really need students and parents to know about.

In fact, there’s something that I discussed back in 2021 that was super-relevant for the paper I just marked. So, what I’ve also done is gone back and dug out all of my old exam marker video diaries that I used to make - I have 6 years of them! - and am going to gift the full collection to all live attendees at the webinar. Please do not judge my selfie set up, lighting or anything else. The content is gold - the video quality, not so gold. It’s an examiner video diary - not a Netflix series. Though you might want to binge it like Netflix.

So here’s where to go to get registered for the free Crack the Exam Code 2024 webinar: 

www.gradetransformation.com/code

There will be a replay sent out to registrants, so even if you can’t make it live, still register and we’ll send you the replay which will be available until Monday 2nd December. So still go to that webpage there if you’re getting this after the live, but before the 2nd Dec.

Okay, second thing I’m going to just quickly address a question I get a lot at this time of year, and this year is no different - about the 10 Week Grade Transformation Program: Now, if you’re new to the podcast and me and Rock Solid Study, - first - welcome, and second, if you don’t know, the 10WGT - 10 Week Grade Transformation Program is my flagship program where I train students in the skills and strategies to have them APPLY their subject knowledge to the way the question is asking, assignment or essay requires, or mark scheme and assessment criteria demand. These include exam technique, time management, organisation, essay strategy, revision and exam prep, and a little bit of mindset too - specifically in relation to stress, procrastination and how to solve for those at the ROOT cause - not just trying to alleviate the symptoms. 

The question that always comes in lots on email at this time of year - that’s before the summer hols here in the southern hemisphere, is:

‘Is it better for my teen to do the 10 Week Grade Transformation Program over the summer break while they have more time to actually do it and give it their full attention, or is it better to do it during term time when they actually have their own tasks and study that they can use as examples or to apply the training to directly and immediately?’ Or something to that effect.

And here down-under, we’re about to embark on the big summer break, but wherever you are, if your teen will be sitting external exams at any time in the future, this is super-relevant.
 

So here’s my answer:

It depends. Don’t worry - I’m going to give you the specifics.

It depends on your teen and their schedule.

If your teen is often really busy during term time, with homework and assessments, with co-curricular, with sport, music, or community activities - so that they feel like doing the 10WGT during ter time would just add more stress rather than be the key to alleviating it, or so that they just wouldn’t perhaps be able to get it done, or wouldn’t be able to give it as much attention as you or they would like, then doing the program over the summer is a GREAT idea.

Not only will they have the brain space and time to do it, it means they’ll have all the tools and techniques ready to go to make the next school year so much smoother, and actually help them gain time back each week by making their study way more efficient and effective because it’ll minimise all of the procrastination, confusion over what to do or how to start, any false starts and re-do’s, any never ending edits and changes to hit the criteria or get within the word count.

However, the flip side is that they won’t have those tasks, essays, exams or questions to practise on immediately. Of course, I include lots of real life examples and practises and demos in the program, but obviously they’ll be exactly that - examples and practises - they won’t be their own.

So, if you feel that your teen would be more engaged and more likely to stay committed to the program if they were doing alongside their everyday study and their own assessments, then waiting until Term 1 will be better. 
Some students do take on board the concepts and training when everything is actively happening around them. But, of course that does mean that they’ll be adding that to their schedule which is likely to be busier than during the holidays. It’s only an hour a week - which I do believe is doable for anyone - for those who tell me they can’t fit it in - I do like to suggest that if they were to be given a million pounds or a million dollars if they completed it, would they be able to fit it in - they actually very likely would fit it in - but I do know life is busy. Which is why everything is broken down into 7 to 13 minute chunks, so they can just find 4 lots of 15 mins or whatever if that works.

But that is my answer. It depends on your teen - but those are the two scenarios of how I would help you to decide what most resonates or best fits your teen.

Just don’t let yourself slip through the cracks if it’s not obvious. If you know that your teen could benefit from this program, from the training, then just make the decision on what you think is just slightly better than the other option and know that there will NEVER be a totally perfect time. For anyone. Which is why I’ve actually put together a special invitation for the 10 Week Program that I’ll share on the webinar - whereby I’m going to include some special extra bonuses - and you can get your teen enrolled and decide to either have them start right away, OR email us with a date that you’d like their enrolment to start. They get 12 weeks access and you can have that start immediately, or delay the start to a date of your choice and still get all of the bonuses in the special offer.

But to get that, you’ll need to enrol through the special invite that I’ll share on the 
webinar. 

So - make sure you come to the webinar - get your access link at www.gradetransformation.com/code

Okay! Now let’s dive into today.

Because in the webinar I’m going to share 5 specific keys to exam success given the specific experiences and insights I gained from the hundreds of papers I just marked. There’ll be lots more detail, examples and specific actions to take away. But as a bit of an intro, I thought that here , I’d give you 5 things that you probably don’t know about external exams, how they work and what’s really involved.

And number 1 is:

That exam papers are not just testing subject knowledge.

They’re testing your teen’s ability to convey specific knowledge or apply specific skills, in the way that the question demands and the mark scheme requires, in the time allowed.

Most students tell me that they prefer coursework and assignments to exams - not because they particularly love the tasks, but because they like having the time to craft their best work or writing and can review it and improve it, without feeling under too much time pressure. Of course there is a deadline, but it tends to be spread out over a timeframe and they don’t have to submit the first - or even second thing that comes out of their brain and onto paper.

It’s the opposite in exams. So being able to dissect the question to know precisely what it’s actually asking, and being able to ‘predict the mark scheme’ so they know what’s gonna get marks and what won’t, AND then having the skills and strategies to actually create that response first time, confidently and time-efficiently makes a huge difference to their confidence and results.

Okay number 2 is:

How the papers get written.

Have you ever wondered who actually makes up the questions? How it gets decided, how many marks a question gets? 

Well, I did and that’s why I’ve been on writing panels and scrutiny panels and have been for the past 5 years or so and can share a little bit of the behind the scenes of what happens.

The writing panel is where teachers (obviously they must not be teaching that cohort who’ll be sitting that paper) and subject experts meet with the exam board subject leader and devise a collection of questions, find or generate sources or stimulus items and draft the mark scheme. This is all according to the topics that are to be examined.

We have to ensure that they cover a range of command levels, usually a range of short and extended response - for some subjects like English there may only be extended response, and for others there may also be multiple choice. 

This gets drafted and then the exam board leader creates the actual paper. Then it goes to scrutiny panel. If you’ve been on the writing panel, you can’t then be on the scrutiny panel and vice-versa.This is where again a group of experienced teachers and subject experts work - this time WITHOUT the exam board subject leader - because of course they wrote this draft that we’re now scrutinising. And we basically DO the whole paper - we essentially independently sit the exam to inspect it for things like:

Is it accessible? 

Does it presume knowledge that shouldn’t be?

Is the language accessible to everyone with a reasonable level of the language?

Is it colour blind friendly? 
Most papers are all black and white these days for that reason. 

Is there any ambiguity to any of the questions?
 
What range of knowledge is it testing? 

Do the command words align with the demands of the question? 

Is the timing appropriate - is there too much or too little for the time allowed?

And also we scrutinise the mark scheme. 

Are the marks divided appropriately?

Does it align with the command? 

Are there any jumps between criteria that are too big or too small?

Are any of the questions essentially too hard or too easy?

And then, after we’ve all sat and done the paper, an independent rep joins us and we discuss our thoughts and judgements, come up with suggestions, discuss improvements. 

We all together then feed back this review to the exam board subject officer. Together we come up with refinements and they will then go away and make the changes.

Now, as you can imagine - all of that is a lengthy process. Often it has been two full days when I’ve done each of those roles. Two full days of writing panel and two days of scrutiny. Hopefully if the first draft of the paper is well written, then a bit less for scrutiny. Maybe a day or a day and a half. But, there is a LOT that goes into it. And I can tell you - just as much attention is given to the mark scheme as it is the questions. Often we’ll reverse engineer the question back from what skills or knowledge we want the student to display. 

Which is why understanding and really being able to suss out mark schemes is such an important skill for students. It’s Catapult 10 in the 10 Week Grade Transformation Program.

So that’s how the exam papers actually get written.

Number 3: 

How the papers get marked!

I’ve been marking for external exams for many more years than I have worked on the panels. And I’ve seen a lot of changes in terms of we literally used to get posted out big batches of papers and had to take them to the post office to get them posted back to the exam board, right through to now, they all get scanned and you mark from home online. I’m sure at some point there will also be technology that means that us as humans don’t do the marking. AI that can review the content and match it to the mark scheme. 

But, here’s what doesn’t change. The way mark schemes are applied. The rigorous training every year for each and every question. The quality assurance for checking the marking is accurate. And on that note: because I get this question a fair bit from students - and parents as well. How do we avoid human error? After all, we’re not robots and we can miss things or misread things, or just make an incorrect judgement, right?

Side note this is one reason why I encourage every student does a full post-morten on every internal assignment and exam they sit when they get it back. Don’t just look at the result and feedback and then brush it under the rug. I’ve seen so many students find extra marks that got overlooked - yes even me marking them! I used to always spend a whole lesson going back through any exam my students sat. We’d pull apart every question and I would always say to them - tell me if you think I’ve missed something that should’ve got credit. And sometime that would happen. That’s what you get for concentrating and paying attention in lesson :) Sometimes, that one mark can even be the difference between a grade boundary.

That’s why, after one or two full days of training, where we’re learning and getting loads of practise in applying the mark scheme accurately and consistently,  often on just one section of a paper, - so that we become experts in that section which further improves consistency - the external exam papers all then get marked at least twice.  And if there is a discrepancy between the two, often a third time. Plus, we get monitored by the lead markers who will either check a random selection of our marking as we go, or who will check the marks we give to control papers - ones that they have already marked, and will show up on our screen to calibrate our marking. 

And who checks the lead markers? 
The Chief Markers. 

So, your teen can be pretty confident that their paper is getting the attention and quality control that it deserves. 

Number 4 is Chief Examiner reports.

These are an absolute treasure trove of insights that I recommend EVERY student and teacher should use, but most don’t even know they exist. 
Tip - they are also sometimes called retrospectives or just marking feedback.

So - what are they? 

Well, at the end of all the marking for a paper all the data is analysed for every question and how students went. The chief marker looks at where students performed well and where they didn’t and provides detailed feedback on how and why this happened and what students and teachers can take forward to give the best chance of success for future students. 

Almost every exam board publishes these online for anyone to find and download.
They can be a little heavy going, but they are totally worth the effort and - bonus tip - can be a huge added help for figuring out where you’ve gone right or gone wrong when using past exams and practise papers.

Now, I have direct links for members to all exam board past papers and the chief examiner reports, nationally and internationally, but you can go google them or just step your way through the exam board past paper section online. But I highly recommend that you go find at least one of these for your teen and have them learn directly from the mistakes and successes of others who’ve literally gone before them.

And finally number 5:

Exams are a game.

They might not be fun - but they are a game. They have rules, they have strategies. They have a score card. And when your teen learns how to play the game, learns the intricacies  and tactics then they are at a massive advantage. 

We can think about this in a few different ways.

If we take a game like tennis - where we want to train before the match in the most effective ways - that’s effective revision - active revision - and strategic exam prep and use of past papers. And we also want to predict what the other player is thinking. What move they’re gonna make so we can get into the best possible position to capitalise on it and then return a winning shot. That would be predicting the mark scheme and knowing how to meet the top criteria.

What we don’t want is to walk onto the court feeling nervous about the opponent and anxious about our skills and knowledge. We want to feel confident that whatever get’s thrown at us, we have the tools and skills to quickly and confidently figure it out and respond quickly and powerfully.

If we take a game like chess. We want to make the smartest moves.  That might be giving the most efficient and effective response - for most marks in least words. We want to plan our responses - that might be giving a really well structured and planned extended response or essay.

What we don’t want is for it to be a game like snakes and ladders, where it just comes down to luck - luck of what questions come up or don’t and luck as to whether what they write in their answer matches the mark scheme. 

I really want your teen to realise that there are ways to make winning the game a LOT more likely. And have the game be a little bit more fun - or at least way less stressful and not fun along the way.

So, if that sounds good to you and you’d like my specific strategies, critical insights and most effective tips and actions - in detail and with real life examples - then definitely get registered for the Crack the Exam Code webinar. 

Go to www.gradetransformation.com/code 

And I’ll see you there.