Case Summaries

After an assessment, the student received a copy of their work including the marker’s written comments. The student was concerned because the marker had said that their answer for question 2 drew on the same example as they had used in response to question 1. There were no marks recorded next to questions 2a and 2b, only against question 2c. The student believed that the marker had unfairly refused to mark questions 2a and 2b because they had used the same example when answering different questions. The student raised their concerns with the provider. The provider confirmed that the mark awarded was appropriate. It acknowledged that in future versions of the assessment it should explicitly state that students should use different examples in their answers to the questions.

The student complained to us. We upheld some parts of the complaint (we decided that it was Partly Justified). We were not able to comment on whether the mark awarded for question 2 was appropriate. We could infer that the mark awarded for question 2 did include sections 2a and 2b as well as 2c, because the mark written at the end of question 2 was higher than the marks available just for section 2c. But we did not think that the provider had given feedback to the student that was clear and unambiguous.

We recommended that the provider should apologise to the student for the lack of clarity in the assessment instructions and in the feedback it had given. We also recommended that the provider should offer the student additional feedback about how the mark for question 2 had been reached.