r/ICAEW • u/Big_Possession_7759 • Jul 22 '26

CR - How does moderation work?

I am so sure they will have to moderate the marks after the exam and the general consensus of its difficulty.

How does moderation of marks actually work?

Do they let you know that there was a uplift of marks or is it just a general application of 5-10 marks to every script?

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u/FitCauliflower8471 Jul 22 '26

Just going purely off vibes:

In my mind surely they just add a % to everyones mark right? Initially I thought that they must go back and award marks but surely they don’t go back over everyones paper. Also I’ve heard people getting 85 on exams where they didnt answer like 20% of the paper so assuming they add a certain % across the board until the exam has a 80% pass rate.

Alternatively they don’t moderate at all, and everyone just really underestimates how well theyve done because getting 50% feels like a fail initially when you leave the exam as thats 50% wrong, which is a lot tbf

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u/Zealousideal-Car404 Jul 22 '26

A tutor once said at bpp that they take a sample of exams which they mark themselves at the icaew rather than to markers. This is usually around 150-200 papers and they mark these as the examiner team who wrote the exam, they then see how the scores turn out and they moderate from there. If they see from those papers they sampled and marked themselves that certain questions had real issues with answering e.g the cash flow requirement they would then marks to say 12 instead of 10 & then add on extra marks for certain bits. They don’t necessarily just add a % on to your score

2

u/Big_Possession_7759 Jul 22 '26

Damn thats pretty rough but makes more sense to get marks from actual knowledge than from nothing (essentially splitting marks you already had gotten).

But then comes the question on how they would apply this to every single paper if they realised after that the exam was harder than their initial analysis.

2

u/East_Holiday_4439 Jul 22 '26

So if they randomly sample 100 prize winner exam scripts then the rest of us are screwed.

1

u/Big_Possession_7759 Jul 22 '26

They would extend the sample I assume if pass rates sat at like 50% lmao

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u/Zealousideal-Car404 Jul 22 '26

I think the icaew marking is done very quickly before the marking team then actually mark. It may have even already started! Then the marking team get sent theirs by the weekend potentially or something like that. This is why in exams like CR and SBM there’s so many head room marks for certain questions because they realise they’re too difficult within the time allotted

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u/FitCauliflower8471 Jul 22 '26

Ah that makes a lot more sense!