01The six
The word ranges are printed because they are part of the task: a portfolio is a different kind of writing from a position note.
Six pieces, and the shape each of them is
The six pieces are not six versions of one exercise. They run from a short statement of a question to a long piece of synthesis, and the ranges below are the ranges the tasks are set against.
A position note is written before a candidate has been taught anything here, and is read again in the twelfth week against the portfolio. A reading log is assessed on the account it gives of an argument rather than on the number of items it lists. The two essays are the conventional pieces of the programme, and the proposal is read as a plan that has to work rather than as an essay about a plan.
Which week each piece falls in is set out on the front sheet
02Marking
Four stages, and a candidate is told at every point which of them a mark has reached.
4stages a script passes
What happens to a script after it is submitted
Every piece of assessed work is retained as it was submitted, and the comment written on it is retained with it. What follows below is the order a script moves through, and no stage is skipped because a mark looks obvious.
Stage one Read and marked by the marker marginal comment
The script is read once through and then marked, and the comment takes two forms: marginal comment against the passage it belongs to, and a summary judgement at the end which states what the piece did and where it stopped short. A mark without a summary judgement is not issued.
Stage two Second reading where the scheme calls for it
A second member of the teaching staff reads the script where the assessment scheme for that piece calls for a second reading. Where the two readers differ, the difference is resolved before the mark is issued, and the candidate is not shown two marks to choose between.
Stage three Available to an external examiner where one is appointed
Scripts and marks are made available to an external examiner where an external examiner is appointed to the programme, which is the ordinary condition of an award at this level. The external examiner reads across the cohort rather than at the request of an individual candidate.
Stage four Assessment review mark confirmed
The review is the point at which a mark stops being provisional. Until it has met, every mark a candidate holds is provisional, and the company says which of the two a candidate is looking at whenever a mark is issued.
03Two marks
A challenge to a mark is answered by returning to the script, which is why the script is kept as submitted.
Provisional against confirmed, and what an extension changes
Provisional
The mark as the marker and, where applicable, the second reader left it. It is real work and is given in full, but it is not the mark the record will carry.
Confirmed
The mark as the assessment review settled it. This is the mark the cohort record holds and the mark any later confirmation of a result is given from.
Where a candidate needs an extension, the request is made before the deadline rather than after it, and the record of the extension is kept with the piece it applies to. A late submission without an extension is read and marked, and the record shows plainly that it arrived late, because the two facts belong together on the same file.
Where a mark is challenged, the challenge is answered by returning to the script and to the comment written on it. That is the reason the script is retained exactly as submitted: a mark stands on a piece of writing, and the writing has to be there for the question to be answerable at all.
04The window
Fifteen working days, counted forward one day at a time, with weekend days passed over.
15working days
The return window, counted out
Written feedback is normally returned within fifteen working days of the submission deadline. Where a piece is returned outside that window, the candidate is told the revised return date before the original one passes, so the first news of a delay is never the delay itself.
Fifteen working days is not three weeks on a calendar, and the difference is the thing candidates most often misjudge. The reckoner below counts the days out one at a time from the day a piece is handed in, passing over Saturdays and Sundays, and prints what it counted so the arithmetic can be checked against a calendar.
- Handed in on
- awaiting a submission day
- Counting forward
- awaiting a submission day
- Weekend days passed over
- awaiting a submission day
- Returned by the end of
- awaiting a submission day
A guide only. It counts Saturdays and Sundays as the non-working days and takes no account of public holidays or of a closure period, either of which moves the date later. The window a candidate is held to is the one stated with the piece.
The feedback tutorial that follows the first essay is on the taught modules sheet