Secondary Schools – Numerical Reasoning Test Marking
This year schools will take the numerical reasoning tests for the first time.
Advice from the developers of these tests is that the papers for Years 7, 8 and
9 should be marked by someone with a sufficiently good level of mathematical
ability. Welsh Government are putting in place contract arrangements to
organise and fund marking of the numerical reasoning for secondary schools
and have commissioned NFER to provide a supported marking service.
There will be two key features of this service:
Each secondary school will be asked to nominate three practitioners
responsible for the marking of tests (one each for year 7, year 8 and year 9)
and these nominees will be invited to attend a one day supported marking
event to be held in Wales during the 4 days following the end of the test
period. Practitioners will bring live scripts to their event and, following mark
scheme training, they will carry out marking in a supported environment under
the supervision of the expert marking team.
Following the events, attendees will be given access to an email marking
enquiry service that will be available until the end of the marking period. This
service will be managed by the most senior members of the expert marking
team and the aim is to allow practitioners to refer any issues that arise during
their marking so that these can be resolved in a consistent manner. Any key
messages could be circulated to all relevant practitioners.