How to balance a paper: chapters, difficulty and marks

Why a paper needs a plan

Many unbalanced papers are not written badly. They are written without a plan. The teacher starts with the questions that come to mind first, and those usually come from the chapters taught most recently or enjoyed most.

A plan takes ten minutes and fixes this. It also protects you when a parent or a student asks why a topic had so many marks, because you can show the plan.

Share marks by chapter

List the chapters or topics the test covers. Give each a share of the total marks that matches its weight in your teaching: the number of lessons it took, and its importance for the next class or exam.

A chapter that took four weeks should not carry the same marks as a chapter that took three days. A simple way is to count the lessons and divide the marks in the same proportion, then adjust by hand.

Round to whole marks. Do not worry about perfect fairness; aim for no chapter being missing and no chapter dominating.

Mix easy, medium and hard

A common starting mix is about half of the marks for easy questions that most prepared students can answer, about a third for medium questions that need some thinking, and the rest for hard questions that separate the best students. Treat this as a starting point, not a rule. A revision test may be easier; a final exam for a strong class may be harder.

Think of difficulty as the work a prepared student must do:

• Easy: remember a fact, a definition or a formula.
• Medium: explain, compare, or apply a rule to a familiar example.
• Hard: apply an idea to a new situation, or combine two topics.

Put easier questions early in each section. A student who starts with a hard question loses confidence and time.

A blueprint table

A blueprint is a small grid: topics down the side, question types across the top, and the marks in the cells. Here is an example for a 50-mark paper with four topics.

The numbers are only an example. Make your own grid on paper, check that every row and column adds up, and then write the questions to fit the cells. If a long question has to be placed in a topic, make sure you really taught that topic.

Fit the time allowed

Do the arithmetic before the test, not during it. Add up how long a prepared student needs for each part.

• An MCQ usually needs about a minute.
• A short question needs two to four minutes, depending on how much the answer has to say.
• A long question with parts needs ten minutes or more.

Add about ten minutes for reading the paper and a few minutes at the end for checking. If the total is more than the time you have, the paper is too long. Remove a question rather than hoping students will be fast. A paper that only the fastest writers can finish measures speed, not knowledge.

Leave room to adjust

Once the blueprint is filled in, write the questions, then step back and compare the finished paper with the plan. Real questions rarely fit the cells exactly. A long question may need seven marks where you planned five. That is fine, as long as you move the difference somewhere else and the total stays right.

Keep your blueprint with the paper. Next term, you can reuse the plan with new questions, and you will have a record of what each test covered. Over a year, this also shows you which topics you test too often and which you forget.

Use choice carefully

"Attempt any three of the following five" lets a student avoid the topic they missed. That is sometimes what you want: it makes the paper fairer to students who were absent. But it also means a topic can go untested.

If you give choice, make the options similar in difficulty and marks, so a student does not gain by choosing the easy ones. Keep some questions compulsory so the key topics are always tested. Paper Desk supports both "attempt any N" and compulsory questions, and adds the marks for you, so the total on the paper is correct when you change the numbers.

Try your plan in the paper maker, and read a typical objective and subjective layout for how the parts are usually arranged.