Assessment

The two objectives

AO1 asks for close knowledge and understanding of the text, a critical style, and informed personal engagement. AO4 asks for understanding of the relationship between the text and its contexts. Each carries 20 of the 40 marks. Note what is not separately assessed here: there is no discrete language-analysis objective, but analysis of Ishiguro’s methods is precisely what ‘critical style’ looks like on the page, so teach it as the route to AO1, not as an extra. One habit to police from the first lesson: device-spotting is not analysis. ‘Ishiguro uses dramatic irony’ earns nothing until the student explores what the irony does to the reader at that moment. The feedback tool is prompted to challenge spotting and to praise the move from device to effect; the same language in your marking keeps the message consistent.

The five levels, in practical terms

Paraphrased for planning purposes, always mark against the current published grid from Pearson.

Level	Marks	What it looks like in a Klara essay
1	1–8	Simple retelling with limited knowledge; little engagement; context barely mentioned; few supporting examples.
2	9–16	Largely narrative response with some valid points and some examples; context mentioned but thinly connected to the text.
3	17–24	Sound knowledge and understanding; relevant personal engagement and an appropriate critical style; clearly relevant examples; relevant comment on context. The published exemplars cluster here, and their commentaries repeat the same two gaps: closer focus on the question throughout, and further examples from across the whole novel.
4	25–32	Thorough: a sustained critical argument, fully relevant examples, detailed awareness of context. The essay ranges confidently across all six Parts.
5	33–40	Assured and perceptive; discriminating choice of evidence; context integrated so naturally it cannot be separated from the reading. The essay has ideas of its own.

What the published exemplars teach

Pearson’s exemplar scripts on this novel (all marked Level 3, from 18 to 24) repay close study, and their commentaries are strikingly consistent. The recurring praise: sound knowledge, valid points, relevant personal engagement, clearly relevant supporting examples. The recurring limits, worth pinning above your marking desk:

• Question focus drifts. Responses open on the question and slide into prepared material. Train re-anchoring: the question’s key word in every topic sentence.
• Range stays narrow. Scripts work one or two episodes hard; examiners repeatedly wanted ‘further examples from across the novel’. The six-Part structure is your teaching tool: evidence from at least four Parts per essay.
• Context stops at gesture. A sentence on ‘Ishiguro’s intentions’ is noted but wanted developing. Teach the woven clause, not the context paragraph.

Comment-only marking and the feedback tool

The site’s marking desk is deliberately grade-free: it annotates in the margin, writes an end comment and sets next steps, but will not produce a number even if asked. That protects two things: the well-evidenced finding that students ignore comments once a grade is visible, and your position as the sole source of level judgements. Suggested workflow: draft → tool annotation → redraft in a different colour → teacher marks the redraft against the grid. The improvement between draft and redraft is itself assessable evidence of progress.

Question bank

Twenty exam-style questions, paired ‘Either/Or’ in the style of the paper, live on the student Exam Skills page, kept there deliberately, so students practise from the same bank you set from. For mocks, pair a theme question with a character question the class has not rehearsed, and hold back two pairs from classroom use each year.