Examiners who contacted the Guardian said the problems this year were mainly due to the new English GCSE paper taking longer to complete, suggesting a sprint to finish marking the 500,000 entries. An email from AQA sent to markers on 30 July said 70,000 scripts on one of the components of the English exam were still unmarked. I don’t recall it ever being that number with other exam boards,” said one examiner, an experienced English teacher. Another examiner, the head of English at a state school, said: “It seems clear to me that they did not have enough examiners to mark this year. AQA said it had completed marking all of its English papers, while Pearson said all its GCSE marking had been completed.

Source: The Guardian August 20, 2017 17:37 UTC