Examiners raise concerns over hard to read handwriting

Examiners have raised concerns over over poor handwriting making it hard to read and mark exam papers.

The vast majority of exam papers are scanned and marked onscreen, which can lead to issues if answers are not clearly written or if pupils do not use black ink as instructed.

According to the Guardian, a report based on feedback from this year’s AQA A-level papers read: “Once again, examiners commented that the answers of many students were difficult to read. In some cases this was the result of poor handwriting or untidy and disorganised presentation. In other cases it resulted when students had not followed the instruction on the front of each examination paper to use black ink or black ballpoint pen.”

The report cautioned that small or faint handwriting can be difficult to read and may ‘lead to issues when examiners are awarding marks’.

Under current arrangements, if a script cannot be read by an examiner the original script is requested from the scanning centre and then marked on paper, although an AQA spokesperson claimed that this was only applicable to an ‘extremely small’ number of scripts each year.