Preparing and submitting coursework and controlled assessment marks

Submission date is 15 May

The final date for submitting your controlled assessment and coursework marks and samples of work for the summer 2015 series is 15 May 2015.

By 15 May you should have submitted your controlled assessment and coursework marks to us, and have sent your moderation sample to the moderator. Each candidate's work should be accompanied by the candidate record sheet attached to the front of their work using a treasury tag.

You'll find the candidate record sheets in the course materials for your qualification, under 'forms and administration'.

Teacher assessment

For GCSE sciences you have had access to both generic and specific marking guidance to enable assessment to the national standard.

For the A level sciences you have access to exemplar material for specific subjects, past training content and unit 3 and 6 examiner reports in the course materials:

Centre internal standardisation

In centres with several teachers contributing to the same GCSE and A level programmes, it's essential that you carry out internal standardisation before you finalise the controlled assessment and coursework marks for submission.

You should sample double mark, selecting mark points within the same mark bands from different teaching sets. The double marking should continue until you are satisfied that you have achieved comparability. Internal standardisation should ensure that your centre's candidates are ranked correctly. It is useful to confirm that you have undertaken internal standardisation by including a brief note within the moderator’s sample.

Annotation of candidate work

It's important that you annotate controlled assessments and coursework to show the moderator how you have interpreted the mark scheme and applied it to the students' work. You should mark and annotate the work in ink rather than pencil.

Grading

You should not attempt to grade candidate work. Only teacher-assess work by applying the marking criteria in a consistent manner.

The controlled assessment and coursework grades will be awarded at the end of each examination series using the standard code of practice awarding process. Grade boundaries, which are subject to change each exam series, are published on the grade boundaries page. For summer 2015, they'll be available to download from results day (20 August 2015).

Please also remember that the mark you submit to us should be the total raw mark, not the UMS mark. The UMS marks are allocated by us as a result of the awarding process.

A score of zero should only be used if a candidate has submitted work that is found to meet none of the assessment criteria. An X should be used for any candidate who is absent.

Submitting marks to us

Your centre marks should be submitted online through Edexcel Online. Make sure your Edexcel Online account has the 'Basic Access' and 'Coursework and Portfolio' permissions boxes ticked. If you don't have this, your examinations officer can grant it.

You must print out a copy of the marks for the moderator and for your own records.

If you've already submitted a mark but it needs to be amended (for example, because of an administrative error), please email the details to courseworkmarks@pearson.com.

On Edexcel Online, from mid-April, you'll see a tick next to the names of those candidates whose work needs to be sent to the moderator. You also need to send the work of the highest and lowest scoring candidates in addition to the requested sample. If any of the requested candidates have been withdrawn or have incomplete submissions, please provide additional candidates' work of a comparable standard, along with a covering note.

The name and address of your moderator will be available on Edexcel Online when the sample is up from mid-April. If you prefer to submit marks on paper, the OPTEMS should have arrived in your centre on April 22.

If you have further questions on how to submit marks or use Edexcel Online, you can contact the Edexcel Online support team.

Regards,

Stephen