Originally Posted by thenetworkbabe:
“Problem is with your understanding of his marking - not him. Craig doesn't believe in the fantasy marking philolosophy of the GCSE where everyone passes whether thay are stupid or not. He doesn't mark like Len who marks from 6-9 most of the time and and ends up giving mediocrity one mark less than something good. Craig seems to mark pretty consistently on what he sees and if he sees nothing, dramatic or technical that he likes you end up with no marks - if you get through a plodding approximation of the dance looking plainly wrong for all of it with no difficulty you will get 2. if he thinks Emma looks right, did something exciting, tried some difficulty and got most aspects of the performance well he's only going to knock two marks off if her feet are wrong. Thats the way the pluses and minuses come out - its not a competition where everyone starts even on the basics of an exciting performance with common standars of fitness, dynamism, artistic interpretation, flow or difficulty and you have to allow for the varied standard of all aspects of the performance as well as dock points for faults.
The point about the marks was expalined on Take Two last week. The marking scale only has whole marks which means that you have to choose between two - 6 or 7, 7 or 8. If you think Jan is somewhere better than a five but not up to a six one week you have to call it and may give her a six if she was nearer to that. The next week she may be better than a six but clearly not as good as a seven or the people you have given 7 - so you give her 6. Its the same mark but the performance is better - in fact someone with 5.5 may have moved up a whole point to 6.5 but they still will get 6 because you think they were nearer to six than 5 one week and nearer to 6 than 7 the next. Its just what happens if you don't have a scale with decimal points in it. There is no contradiction - just rounding up one week and down the next. Its why most professional markers prefer percentage scales and most sports use the decimal points.”
Being an examiner and one who writes the papers for GCSE, plus attending grade award meetings which start at 0900hrs and have at times gone on untill after 2400hrs. At which we ensure we maintain standards year on year plus ensure the paper and responses are correct, I am not happy with you saying we pass all, we do not pass all. I think you should get your facts straight before you make an example.
Craig on the whole does a good job with his marking and I would agree with him on most of his marking. I also agree that any judge could be focused on a different aspect of the dance and this may make their marking seem odd at times but they are not able to see a play back and then award the marks.
