On the rubric of the muliple choice modular paper it states that "mark only one answer for each question. If you change your mind about an answer, rub out the first mark completly, then mark your new answer."
This sounds foolproof but I have experience of large numbers of students sitting the UKMT papers which also are assessed by multiple choice with machine marking (I am assuming that machine marking will be used for these GCSE papers). The most able students sit the UKMT papers but, every year, a sizeable number of students find, in their feedback, that the machine had read multiple answers for a single question and thus marked it wrong. The reasoning is usually that the candidate had not rubbed out the mark fully or that some rubber remnants had shown up as a mark on the machine. Similarly it may not pick up a mark if the student did not push down hard enough.
Now at UKMT this is a pain but not the end of the world - at GCSE it is much more of a problem as students futures could, possibly, rest on a machine misread of this type.
A few quick questions:
a) Am I correct in thinking the papers will be machine read (if not then I am worried about nothing)?
b) If a machine picks up a question with more than one answer what is the outcome - a manual mark or just marked incorrect?
c) Will EdExcel be investigating the accuracy of machine marking to see how big an issue "false readings" of this type (and the 'too light a mark' type)?
Cheers
Steve