Some Cambridge qualifications have components where the teacher marks their own students’ work. We then check this marking before the release of results to schools. Examples of these types of components can be found in coursework and non-coursework tests in Cambridge IGCSE and A Level syllabuses.
For each of these components, if more than one teacher at the school has marked students’ work, the school must follow a detailed process called internal moderation before they submit their students’ marks and work. Internal moderation helps schools to be sure that every teacher is marking to the same standard.
Selecting an internal moderator
Each school selects one teacher per component as an internal moderator. The internal moderator is usually a head of department but it can be a subject teacher. It is their responsibility is to check that all teachers for each qualification are marking consistently to the same standard. An internal moderator makes sure ALL students in each teacher’s class have been judged in the same way, against the same marking criteria for that component.
How does internal moderation work?
- The internal moderator looks at all students’ marks for that subject. Each subject teacher marks their own students’ work. The internal moderator then checks the marking of each of these teachers at the top, middle and bottom of the mark range to see if they agree with the marks. At this stage some marks may change.
- If the internal moderator needs to change marks for the marking they have reviewed, they should expand the range of marks they are checking by looking at other students’ work. If the internal moderator finds a consistent trend or pattern in a teacher’s marking they may adjust the marks of other students’ work, marked by the same teacher, in line with this trend or pattern.
- By internally moderating the marks, the internal moderator produces a final list of all the school’s marks for that qualification. The marks are listed in descending order - with the highest marks at the top and the lowest marks at the bottom. This is called a rank order. We call these the internally moderated marks. These are the marks that the school sends to us.
- We check these marks and the sample of students’ work that is submitted at the same time. Our Principal Moderator leads this process, which is called external moderation. External moderation checks the marks that have been submitted by all schools for each qualification.
Internal moderation confirms that all marking within each school is consistent and fair to all students who have been entered for the same component.
