KS3 Mathematics

Last week's tests have been completed by thousands of children. On Saturday I attended the Markers' Meeting where we went through the mark scheme in detail and completed some training scripts. Most of Sunday was spent completing the standardisation excercise online, (apart from a couple of hours off watching Manchester United clinch the Premiership title .... well done Giggsy!) and it was pleasing to be told "you have successfully passed standardisation" and may commence marking.

So, the past three days have been spent getting stuck in, and making inroads into the mountain of scripts on the floor of the spare bedroom. I wish ......
The trouble is, there aren't any scripts. They haven't arrived yet. They probably haven't even been dispatched yet.

I have been marking KS3 Maths every year since it began, 1993 or 1994 I think. Over the years the Tests have been delivered by a number of agencies, Edexcel (twice) and AQA, and this year the organisers are someone called ETS Europe, a division of ETS Global BV.
In every other year the schools sent the scripts directly to the marker and, as soon as the marker had completed the standardisation exercise, marked the sample scripts and had them approved by the Team Leader, he/she could get stuck in to the marking.
This year, in their wisdom, ETS decided to have all the scripts sent to a central point (in Hartlepool I believe) from whence they would distribute them to the markers. Someone has been spending the last few days sorting through in excess of 100,000 scripts and (hopefully) started to send them out.

At lunchtime today I'm off to look after the grandchildren for a couple of days. I was hoping to take lots of marking to do while the children are at school but the chances of any scripts arriving before I leave are fairly slim.

Never mind, it says in the handbook "scripts should arrive in three working days and certainly before May 27th."