How Portfolios Are Marked and Moderated

Marked as one thing

Nothing in this module will help you draw, print or photograph better. It is about how the work you have already made gets turned into a mark, which is a separate skill and one almost nobody is taught. Two facts drive everything. Your portfolio is marked holistically, as a single body of work rather than piece by piece. And the mark your centre gives is checked against a national standard, so it has to be defensible to someone who has never met you and never saw you make any of it.

How the marking works

Six terms. Two of them carry a number, and the numbers matter.

What holistic means

Your portfolio is marked holistically. What does that mean in practice?

• The whole body of work is judged together against each objective
• Every piece is marked and the marks are averaged to give a total
• Only the strongest pieces count, so the weaker ones can be left in safely
• Only the finished outcome counts, since that is what shows your ability

Piece by piece, or all together

It is worth seeing exactly what changes for you between the two ways of marking. The right-hand column is how your portfolio is actually treated.

Term to meaning

What moderation is for

AQA moderates a sample of portfolios from each centre. Select the TWO things moderation is there to do.

• Check that the centre has marked to the same standard as everywhere else
• Allow the centre marks to be adjusted if that standard has not been met
• Re-mark every portfolio in the centre from the beginning
• Decide whether individual artworks are good enough to be included

Moderation is not remarking

Students often imagine moderation as a stranger going through their portfolio deciding whether they deserve their mark. It is not that. A sample from the centre is looked at, and the question asked is whether the centre as a whole has applied the standard correctly. If it has, the marks stand. If the centre has been generous or harsh across the board, the adjustment applies to its candidates together. So the person your teacher really has to convince is not you. It is someone outside the school who will only ever see the work and the reasons written down for it.

The order it happens

Put the stages of marking and moderation into the order they actually occur.

• You complete the portfolio as a single sustained project across the course
• Your centre judges the whole body of work against the objectives and places it in a band
• The centre records the reasoning behind that mark on the Candidate Record Form
• AQA moderates a sample of the centre portfolios against the national standard
• Marks are confirmed, or adjusted across the centre if the standard was not met

The marking process in a paragraph

A portfolio is marked _____, meaning the whole body of work is judged together rather than piece by piece. It is placed against a ladder of _____ bands, and it must evidence all _____ assessment objectives within the one project. Your _____ marks it first and writes down the reasoning on the Candidate Record Form. AQA then moderates a _____ of portfolios to confirm the centre has marked to the national standard.

What the form is actually for

Which statement about the Candidate Record Form is correct?

• The centre uses it to record why it awarded the mark it did
• The student uses it to explain what they intended each piece to show
• It lists every piece in the portfolio so that nothing can be added later
• It is where a student records a disagreement with the mark they received

What a moderator sees

The portfolio described here is INVENTED, so that we can look at the same one together. It does not exist. A student builds a project on shadows in the school building. It opens with photographs taken over several weeks, alongside notes on two artists whose work they looked at and what they took from each. There are then a run of experiments in different media, several of which clearly did not work, each with a short note on what was learned. Later pieces narrow towards a single approach, and the project ends with one resolved outcome. Now think about what a moderator is checking. Not whether the final outcome is beautiful. They are asking whether the four objectives are evidenced across the whole body of work, and whether the mark the centre gave fits the band it claimed. The failed experiments help rather than hurt, because they are the visible record of refinement. A portfolio of six polished but unconnected pieces would be weaker, despite looking better.

Which statement is false

Three of these statements about how portfolios are marked are true. Select the ONE that is false.

• The centre marks the portfolio before AQA sees any of it.
• Every portfolio in the centre is looked at during moderation.
• All four assessment objectives must be evidenced within the single project.
• The reasoning behind the centre mark is recorded on the Candidate Record Form.

What follows from holistic marking

Each decision below is one a student really faces. Work out what follows from the way the portfolio is actually marked.

• You want to remove a set of experiments that did not work, because they look messy. What does holistic marking suggest?
• You have a very strong final outcome but almost no record of how you got there. What is the risk?
• A friend says the mark does not matter because the teacher decides it anyway. What is wrong with that?
• Knowing the reasoning goes on the Candidate Record Form, what is the most useful thing you can do?

Explain how it is marked

Explain how a Component 1 portfolio is marked and moderated, and what that means for how you build the work.

• Explain what holistic marking is, and what it means that no single piece carries its own mark
• State how many assessment objectives must be evidenced, and that they sit within one project
• State how many bands the work is placed against
• Explain what the Candidate Record Form is for and who completes it
• Explain what moderation checks, and why only a sample is needed for that
• Say one thing you would do differently in building a portfolio, now that you know how it is judged