Copy checking rules for teachers.

There are fewer written rules than most teachers expect, and they cover less than you would hope. This is what a board actually instructs its examiners to do, and then the longer and more useful list: the decisions it leaves entirely to you.

What a board instructs its examiners

Mark the script, don't just score it

A correct answer gets a tick, a wrong one a cross. The instruction is unusually emphatic that a tick must never be used where no marks are being awarded, because a tick with no mark beside it reads to everyone afterwards — the student, the head examiner, a re-evaluator — as a mark that was earned and lost in the totalling. It is named as the single commonest thing examiners get wrong.

Where the numbers go

For a question with parts, marks go on the right-hand side against each part, then the parts are totalled and the total written in the left margin and encircled. For a question with no parts, the mark goes straight into the left margin, encircled. The point is that anyone picking the script up later can see both the award per part and the figure that was carried forward.

Use the whole scale

Examiners are told explicitly not to hesitate to award full marks where the answer deserves it. The instruction exists because the opposite habit — holding back the last mark on principle — is common and is treated as an error, not as rigour.

Mark against the scheme, not your own reading of the question

The scheme is to be followed rather than reinterpreted. But two things are carved out of that. A student who expresses a correct answer in their own words, rather than in the scheme's words, is to be given the marks. And where an answer is correct on more recent information, or demonstrates the competency the question was testing by a route the scheme did not anticipate, it is still to be credited. The scheme is described as suggested value points, not as the complete answer.

An error is charged once

An error is not to be deducted for its cumulative effect; it is penalised once. Note the limit of that: it says the mistake is charged where it happened, not that every later step is then credited from the student's wrong figure. CBSE publishes no mark-by-mark follow-through rule, and the phrase “carried forward” does not appear in its schemes at all. See error carried forward for where the convention and the instruction part company.

Extra questions and options

If a student answers more questions than required, the better answer is retained and the other struck out and labelled as an extra question. Under on-screen marking the handling differs by subject: in some papers the evaluator marks both options and the system keeps the higher, and in others the evaluator has to pick the higher one by hand. If your centre runs papers with internal choice, decide which of these you are doing before the first script, not during it.

Somebody checks the checker

A head examiner is required to go through the first five answer books evaluated by each examiner on day one, before releasing the rest of that examiner's allocation, and to resolve any variation by discussion. This is the mechanism that makes marking consistent across a board, and it is the one almost no institution reproduces internally — which is why two teachers in the same staff room routinely mark the same script differently. More on how boards do this.

How much marking is considered a day's work

Twenty answer books a day in main subjects, twenty-five in others, across an eight hour day. Whatever you think of the figure, it is a useful external reference the next time somebody is handed a hundred and fifty scripts and a weekend.

The mistakes a board tells its examiners to avoid

The instructions carry a numbered list of errors examiners have actually committed. It is the most directly useful thing in the document for anyone running checking at a centre, because it is a checklist rather than a principle.

Six of those ten are arithmetic or transcription, not judgement. That is worth sitting with: the majority of documented marking failures are not disagreements about an answer, they are a number copied wrongly from one place to another.

English papers have their own rules

For English, the instructions are more specific than for most subjects, and they run in the student's favour more often than teachers assume:

• No marks are deducted for exceeding the word limit.
• A recurring spelling error is penalised once, not every time it appears.
• In the reading section, nothing is deducted for mistakes of grammar, usage, spelling or length, and full marks may be given where the student has identified the core ideas.
• Also in the reading section, lifting a portion of the passage as the answer is not penalised, provided it is relevant.
• Answers in the literature sections are described as suggestive, and an independent interpretation is to be discussed with the head examiner before marks are awarded — not simply marked wrong.

Class 10 English Language and Literature does carry a writing-section deduction for three or more spelling errors. So the rule is not that spelling never counts; it is that where it counts is specified, and everywhere else it does not. More on marking literature answers.

What no board tells you

This is the longer list, and it is the reason two conscientious teachers produce different marks on the same script. We looked through every CBSE, CISCE and GSEB document we hold. On the following, none of them instructs an examiner at all:

CISCE publishes model answers and examiner commentary but no examiner instructions at all; its guidance is written for candidates. GSEB publishes answer keys and blueprints, not a theory scheme. So for most of the table above, a teacher in an ICSE or state-board school has nothing to consult even in principle.

CBSE refers to a separate document, its guidelines for spot evaluation, which is not something we hold and which may well address several of these. If your centre has a copy through an examiner, it is worth reading.

What to do with this at your own centre

The practical reading is that the published rules handle the mechanics and leave every judgement call to you. So write down the judgement calls, once, before the next test rather than during it. The five worth deciding in advance:

• What happens to an answer you genuinely cannot read.
• Whether a right answer with no working gets full marks, part, or none.
• Whether a correct non-standard method is credited, and who adjudicates it.
• How half marks round at the question total and at the paper total.
• Who plays head examiner — whose first five scripts get checked, by whom, before the rest go out.

The last one does more for consistency than the other four together, and it is the one almost nobody does.

Common questions

Are teachers legally bound by CBSE's checking rules?

Not for internal tests. The instructions govern board evaluation by appointed examiners. A school or coaching centre marking its own unit test, pre-board or weekly paper is setting its own policy, whether or not it has written that policy down. Most have not, which is the actual problem.

Is there a rule about marking in red?

Not one we can find. Ticks, crosses and the placement of totals are specified in detail; the ink colour is not mentioned. It is convention, not instruction.

What should happen to an answer nobody can read?

No board document we hold says. That makes it a decision your centre has to take and apply consistently, rather than one each marker takes alone at eleven at night. Deciding it in advance is the whole point.

How many papers is it reasonable to mark in a day?

As an external reference point, a board considers twenty answer books in a main subject a full eight-hour day for an appointed examiner marking to a scheme. Any figure well above that is worth questioning, and is usually the moment the documented transcription errors start appearing.