Teachers assessing IA's

[DianeMastro]

Do teachers need to be certified or trained to grade a Math SL IA?  We had the first draft evaluated by the teacher of the class who graded the IA's high and then it was regraded by the department chair who is more experienced and the students received lesser grades (as much as 30% off the original grade) and were not going to be given the chance to improve their grades.  The first review seems like it was not valid since it did not provide full feedback to the students to allow them to achieve the highest score possible and was not evaluated by someone who had ever done the IA evaluation to give full feedback or approximate scoring. Help! 

[Adaxlim]

Yes. The teacher needs to be IB trained and at least an IB Math teacher in order to mark the IAs. As I do not know why your department head evaluated them like that. Don't worry though, IB moderates the IAs from each school and it will only help your mark in order to keep the marking scheme fair. Worst case scenario is that if you are not happy with your marks you can request to 'fight' for them, eg. emailing IB to remark your IA (with a fee). The marking bands for the 2017 SL IAs were:

• 1 = 0-2 marks
• 2 = 3-5 marks
• 3 = 6-8 marks
• 4 = 9-11 marks
• 5 = 12-14 marks
• 6 = 15-17 marks
• 7 = 18-20 marks

I hope this answered your question! Good luck!

[kw0573]

No, the IAs cannot be remarked, only re-moderated if there is over 15% difference between the average grade of what the teacher gave vs what IB gave.

In addition, teachers are allowed to read a full draft once and even then the teacher can only say what should be improved not precisely how to fix the errors.