What's it all about?

For every exam you mark, you'll be standardised. This is to ensure you mark consistently to a set standard. The awarding body will send you details of when and where the standardising meeting will occur. Often a day-long affair, the Standardisation Day will be an opportunity to get to grips with the marking and a chance to meet your fellow examiners. You may be asked to standardise online. Many awarding bodies have developed software packages that allow you to assess online. The standardisation procedures will be sent to you before you mark any scripts. Ensure that you follow the instructions carefully.

Before you go

As soon as you know the date, mark it in your diary. It may be weeks away, but writing it in now ensures you won't double-book.

Examiners who live a considerable distance from the standardisation venue can travel down the night before. Check first whether the awarding body has a list of approved hotels and if they can book the hotel for you.

What to take with you

Take a copy of the exam paper and its mark scheme (the set answers) which you should have received. If the mark scheme has changed since you received a copy, you will be required to annotate the copy that has been sent in the post. You'll use this during your subsequent marking.

If you've been asked to mark any practise exam papers before the day, pack these too. You'll be able to refer to these during the Standardisation Day to remind yourself of any questions you had difficulty in marking and want explained more fully.

Give yourself time to find the venue

You may have visited the town or city before, but don't bank on finding the hotel or conference hall very quickly. Allow yourself extra time to get there so you don't arrive feeling flustered. Arriving early will also give you an opportunity to orientate yourself around the venue, to find where the meeting room is and where the toilets are located.

Meet the team

After signing in you'll be asked to join your team and meet your Team Leader. During the day your Team Leader will make sure that you all fully understand how to use the mark scheme to mark the exam paper.

The answers don't match the mark scheme

Photocopies of scripts entered by this year's students are used to show the range of possible answers you'll be encountering when you start marking for real. Your Team Leader will take you through each answer and compare it to the official mark scheme answer - allowing you to familiarise yourself with how to apply the mark scheme.

Different students may use different writing styles in answering the questions. This leads to some interesting phonetic conundrums - all of which you will have to decipher and mark in a consistent way. Remember when you begin marking your allocation of scripts you can only mark what you see and not what was intended. Your Team Leader will use the Standardisation Day to show you how to mark these answers to ensure you are fair and consistent with each candidate.

Online meeting

Your exam may be one that has changed to online standardisation. Specially designed computer software allows examiners to meet and discuss how to mark scripts over the internet. You'll use your home computer to log-in to a secure website on a specified date and time, and there you'll meet the rest of your team and your Team Leader.

An online standardisation day will follow a similar format to a traditional standardisation - so expect to look at how questions might be answered and be prepared to ask questions about points you don't understand. But this will be through a microphone or typed directly into the secure website.

A full day

Attending a Standardisation Day is hard work; don't under-estimate how drained you'll feel by the time you finish. Allow yourself time for reflecting on the day's events and planning how you can put what you have learnt into practice when you begin marking your allocation of scripts.