Marking long answers consistently at eleven at night
The same essay marked at 7pm and at midnight gets different marks from the same teacher. A rubric is not bureaucracy, it is what makes marking survivable.
27 August 2026 2 min read
Marking drifts. It drifts within one pile, because the standard set by the first five scripts becomes the standard for the rest, and it drifts with fatigue, so the same answer scores differently at 7pm and at midnight. This is not carelessness; it is what happens to any human making dozens of holistic judgements in a row.
What a rubric is for
Not fairness in the abstract. A rubric solves a practical problem: it converts one hard judgement ("how good is this?") into three or four easy ones ("is the method stated? is the reasoning connected? is the conclusion answering the question asked?"). Easy judgements survive fatigue; hard ones do not.
Build it from three or four criteria
- Name what you are actually rewarding. If method matters more than the final number, say so and weight it. Many tutors mark as though method matters and award as though it does not.
- Two or three levels per criterion, not five. Five levels means the middle three are indistinguishable and you will use them interchangeably.
- Describe the level, do not grade it. "States a method and applies it with one slip" is markable. "Good understanding" is a synonym for the mark you were going to give anyway.
Calibrate before you start
Read five scripts without marking any of them. You will find the range, and the rest of the pile is judged against the range rather than against the first script you happened to open. This one habit removes most of the drift within a pile.
Mark by question, not by student
All of question three across the whole group, then all of question four. It is faster, because you hold one mark scheme in your head at a time, and it is far more consistent, because the comparison you are making is between answers to the same question rather than between students.
The side effect worth having
A rubric shared with students before the exam is the clearest teaching you will do all term. Most students who lose marks on long answers are not short of knowledge. They do not know what a full answer looks like, and nobody has ever shown them.
Sources
Frequently asked questions
How many levels should a rubric criterion have?
Two or three. With five, the middle levels become indistinguishable in practice and get used interchangeably, which reintroduces exactly the inconsistency the rubric was meant to remove.
Why mark question by question instead of student by student?
You hold one mark scheme in mind at a time, which is faster, and you compare answers to the same question rather than students to each other, which is much more consistent.
Should students see the rubric before the exam?
Yes. Many students lose marks on long answers not from missing knowledge but from never having been shown what a complete answer looks like.
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