Sats marking chaos - your stories

A selection of their comments are published below. To share your Sats tales, email news@channel4.com.

'I received papers that had been marked appallingly'

"As a secondary English teacher, I became enraged at Mr Balls' protestations that the standard is 'no lower than in previous years'. If this is the case, the Sats examinations should be scrapped altogether.

"Yesterday, I received papers that had been marked appallingly, with writing papers in which the students had written a considerable amount awarded zero marks, reading papers that had not even had the marks added up, and some papers that did not appear to have even been read.

"Considering the immense amount of pressure put on both teachers and pupils to perform well and reach targets in these exams, the standard of the marking is disheartening."

Lucy de Gaye, Leeds

'My son's English result is still unavailable'

"My son has just returned from school today clutching his maths and science Sats results. His English result is still unavailable and the school have had to resort to supplying a teacher assessment.

"Could Mr Balls explain why my son's new secondary school repeats the Sats in October before streaming the children? Presumably they don't believe the official ones are worth the paper they're written on."

Jenny Pearce

'Entering pupils onto the system was laborious and not user-friendly'

"I am an examinations officer at an 11-16 foundation school in Wiltshire. My task is to ensure that the pupils are entered for the exam and that papers are received, completed and despatched to markers.

"Problems commenced from the start. Entering pupils onto the system was laborious and not user-friendly.

"Every child's exam tier had to be entered individually. Their system did not allow for the downloading of school-held management information as an entity for each tier. This would have saved hours of work.

"Online registers were used by ETS Europe, but unless one had hand-held computers, this only doubled the work as one had to know who was in the exam in the first place to confirm in the system they were actually there.

"Despatch arrangements were made more of an administrative burden than in previous years, and from a teacher marker's view point, the change of courier from Parcelforce, with outlets at main post offices for non-delivered items, to UPS, who only have depots in main towns and cities, made the collection of non-delivered scripts a nightmare.

"I alerted the NAA early in the programme that things were not going well, certainly about a month before the exams started in May 2008."

John Glover

'This year I did not mark because I wasn't asked'

"Ed Balls is wrong again. I have marked key stage two maths Sat papers since they began in 1994. I was graded as a grade-A marker and I have been teaching for 20 years.

"This year I did not mark because I wasn't asked. My 10-page online application last autumn was a fiasco, with passwords not working correctly. There was no invitation to attend a moderation meeting similar to those I have attended since 1994.

"I know of at least three other experienced teachers/markers who have not taken part this year. Are we not wanted? Did we all have online application errors? Or, as most teachers suspect, are there big problems with the new system?"

Patricia Perry

'The Shakespeare paper has been returned unmarked'

"My daughter is a year nine pupil; last week her maths teacher gave her a verbal score for her paper after working out the grade himself from returned marked papers.

"Pupils have not received any mark for science or English and were informed today that the Shakespeare paper of their English test had been returned unmarked. The scale of the problem is far greater than we're being led to believe.

"Teachers are quite capable of administering and marking tests at this level so why are we as taxpayers funding this American-run operation which has previous form for messing up the marking process? Yet another national disgrace."

Joan Venus-Evans, Hull

'It could take markers longer to enter the marks than to mark the papers'

"During tonight's news report we were again fed the line by Mr Balls that part of the problem this year was recruitment and retention of markers.

"Whilst it is true that retention was an issue due to the shambolic training arrangements this year (markers were given, in some cases, 24 hours' notice that they would have to travel 200 miles to attend marker training) it is not accurate to say that there were insufficient markers this year.

"Indeed ETS trained too many markers - so much so that significant numbers of markers never received a single script to mark. This was such an issue that ETS had to introduce a compensation scheme (£250) for markers who attended training, passed the initial test and then never received scripts.

"The two key issues (among many smaller ones which had a cumulative effect) this year were, firstly, the insistence that all scripts were sent to central depots before being sent to markers (in the past scripts were sent straight from schools to markers). The scripts were sorted at the depot before being sent to markers.

"Two discrete problems occurred at this stage - the process took several weeks to complete costing markers considerable valuable marking time including the vital half-term marking period and, secondly, the wrong scripts were sent to the wrong markers in a significant number of cases and ETS's helpline system was unable to remedy this situation for weeks resulting in scripts sitting unmarked in studies all over the place.

"The second key issue was the requirement that once scripts were marked markers had to input question-by-question scores for each pupil onto an online mark system - this meant, in the case of maths, more than 60 individual marks having to be entered for each and every pupil.

"The system was so slow and unpredictable it could take markers longer to enter the marks than to mark the papers - and the fee was only 25p per script for data entry. Even at the marking panels they have found that data entry rates with specific data entry admin staff is lagging some way behind the rate of marking.

"This issue was amplified by ETS's strict refusal to allow markers to continue marking scripts whilst these issues were sorted out. The system forced markers to be 'tested' on an online script once for every 100 scripts entered online.

"If these tests were failed marking would be terminated (and stories of the system failing people on these tests in error were confirmed by ETS so people were worried). Threats to deny payment for any markers who continued marking past 100 scripts whilst waiting for the IT to kick back into action resulted in marking stopping for periods of time."

Steve Wren, head of maths

'I'm so disappointed on behalf of the pupils I taught'

"I am an English teacher. I taught a year nine class in Wolverhampton. The school received the key stage three exam papers back last week and the quality of marking is appalling.

"I'm no longer at the school, but have been informed that teachers have had to spend valuable time re-marking the papers in order to justify submitting the paper to be remarked.

"I'm so disappointed on behalf of the pupils I taught, who worked so hard, as well as the team of teachers I worked with, who dedicated hours of time to ensure pupils performed successfully."

Gemma Powell

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