Answered It Wrong?

Every summer, a few hours after the English exams finish, the same kind of message appears on a large online forum for students in the UK. Its writer has found a mistake that can no longer be fixed. One post is titled “GCSE English Edexcel -writing in the wrong section of the exam paper”. Another asks, “Wrong Format on IGCSE English Language Transactional Writing task. Am I Cooked?” In the language of the forum, being “cooked” means that everything is lost. A third student writes, “I wrote a story for the picture description question”.

When we studied what students ask on that forum, we found twenty-three threads of exam-day panic like these, with fifty-eight replies between them. The replies are mostly other students guessing. Some say the answer will get zero. Others say it makes no difference at all. Which of them is right?

Three mistakes, three very different costs

Suppose you are that IGCSE student, and you wrote a letter when the task asked for an article. You sit at the kitchen table that evening, and you want one thing: a true answer. What would you need to know first?

You would need to know which kind of mistake you made, because the exam boards treat them very differently. The first kind is a mistake of place, where a good answer is written in the wrong space in the booklet. The second is a mistake of number, where a student answers too many questions, too few, or the wrong one. The third is a mistake of task, where the answer is in the right place but does a different job from the one the question set, such as a letter where the question asked for an article.

A good answer in the wrong place

Start with place, because students can usually recover from it.

The exam papers tell students where to write, usually on the front cover. AQA’s cover says, “You must answer the questions in the spaces provided.” The next line explains what to do when the space runs out: “use the lined pages at the end of this book. Write the question number against your answer(s).”^[1] Cambridge IGCSE, Edexcel and Eduqas give the same instruction in their own words.^[2][3][4] At the start of every exam, the invigilator also reads out a set announcement, which includes this line: “You must write in the designated sections of the answer booklet.”^[5]

Why does it matter so much? Pearson, which runs Edexcel, gave the reason in guidance written for its History exams. Students should write in the correct space “to ensure that the full answer is seen by the examiner before a mark is awarded”.^[6] The risk, then, is that an answer in the wrong place may not be seen by the examiner who marks that question.

That risk can be reduced, even during the exam. Pearson’s guidance adds that a student who continues an answer elsewhere “should also state in the answer space, that the answer has been continued”.^[6] OCR tells its examiners to “Always check the pages (and additional objects if present) at the end of the response in case any answers have been continued there.”^[7] A student who notices the mistake while there is still time can help the examiner. Write a short note in the correct space, such as “continued on page 14”, and write the question number beside the answer itself.

Extra answers cost time, a wrong text costs marks

Now the mistakes of number. A student who panics about a choice sometimes answers both questions, to be safe. That seems sensible, because surely the examiner will then find the better one.

On OCR’s Literature papers, the mark scheme shows what happens. “Where candidates have provided more answers than required, then all responses are marked and the highest mark allowable within the rubric is given.” The next sentence gives the catch: “The underlying assumption is that the candidate has penalised themselves by attempting more questions than necessary in the time allowed.”^[7] In other words, nobody takes marks away for the extra answer. The cost has already been paid, in minutes that were taken from the answer that counts. We did not find a rule for this case in the AQA or Edexcel mark schemes we read.

The same logic applies to crossing out. OCR’s examiners are told that when a student has “crossed out a response and provided a clear alternative then the crossed out response is not marked”.^[7] A student who crosses out a good answer in a moment of panic and writes a weaker one has chosen the weaker one. Edexcel’s Language paper asks students to mark a cross in a box to show which writing question they chose, and explains how to change that choice cleanly.^[3] It takes a few seconds, and it tells the examiner which answer to read.

The wrong text is a different case, because here the answer itself no longer fits the question. AQA’s Literature mark scheme lists the defining features of some tasks, including a poetry response “to named poem and one other from the named cluster”. An answer that misses such a feature “could, as referenced in the mark scheme, be ‘capped’ at the top of Level 2”, and every such case “will always be referred to a senior associate”, a more senior member of the marking team.^[8] On that paper, Level 2 is six to ten marks out of thirty. So a student who compares the wrong pair of poems can lose far more than a student who wrote a correct answer in the wrong space.

Other boards set similar limits for similar slips. In AQA Language, an answer that writes only about lines outside the ones the question names “should be placed in either Level 1 or Level 2”.^[9] Where the question asks for both sources, an answer that uses only one of them cannot reach Level 3.^[10] OCR says that if a Literature answer “has not moved beyond the extract, the mark should not be above Level 3.”^[7]

A letter instead of an article: costly, not zero

The third kind is the one in that IGCSE student’s title. What happens when the form is wrong?

We looked for a fixed penalty in every writing mark scheme we hold, and did not find one. What we found instead is that form sits inside the marks for communication. Edexcel’s International GCSE grid asks for “adapting form, tone and register of writing for specific purposes and audiences”, and describes its lowest level as showing “Little awareness of form, tone and register”.^[11] Eduqas writes, “An understanding of purpose, audience and format is particularly important in this type of writing”, and places format in the column worth twelve marks for communication and organisation.^[12] Its eight marks for vocabulary, sentences, spelling and punctuation sit in a separate column, which does not mention format at all. Edexcel’s GCSE scheme says that the article question “should be set out as an article”.^[13] Cambridge reminds its examiners that “marks are not deducted for errors”, and that its rules “must be applied consistently, e.g. in situations where candidates have not followed instructions”.^[2]

Some say a letter will get zero. None of these schemes tells examiners to give a letter zero when the task asked for an article. The letter is marked on the same grid, and it loses marks in the place where the board rewards writing for the right reader and purpose. How many marks it loses depends on how far the writing still does the job the task set. A letter to a newspaper that argues well for the right readers is closer to an article than a letter to a friend that tells a story. We think this is why the answer to the IGCSE student’s question is usually “not cooked, but costly”.

The story-for-a-description slip works in a similar way. AQA’s examiners wrote in 2023 that “Overlap between description and narrative is seen in each series, but planning the piece can often maintain the original focus”.^[14] The same report lists “Writing that did not address either task” among the features of weaker answers.^[14]

Fifteen minutes left and the form is wrong

Suppose there are fifteen minutes left and the student sees the word “article” above a page that begins “Dear Sir”. Starting again would leave nothing finished. We think the safer choice is usually to keep going, and to make the rest of the piece fit the reader and the purpose the question names. In our view, a complete answer that does part of the job usually earns more than half an answer that does all of it.

Five things to do this week

1. Read the instructions on the front of a real past paper for your board. Say aloud how many questions you must answer in each section, and which ones are a choice.

2. Underline the form, the reader and the purpose in every writing question you practise. In “Write an article for a magazine”, the form is an article and the reader is a magazine’s reader.

3. Check the named poem, text or lines before you start. Circle the poem’s title or the line numbers. Look at them again halfway through your answer.

4. Practise running out of space. In your next timed essay, carry on at the back of the booklet, write the question number beside it, and write “continued on page…” in the original space.

5. Answer only the number of questions the paper asks for. If you change your mind about a choice, cross out the first answer with one line, and only after the second answer is written.

If you would like to know where your child’s own writing stands today, our free assessment takes five minutes.

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