--- title: "How a six-mark chemistry question is actually marked - Kerfox" description: "A levels-of-response answer is marked twice: for its shape, then for its content. What AQA’s examiners said a Level 3 answer looks like, and what holds it back." image: "https://www.kerfox.app/og.webp" url: "https://www.kerfox.app/blog/how-a-six-marker-is-marked" --- [Kerfox](https://www.kerfox.app/) [THE KERFOX BLOG](https://www.kerfox.app/blog) HOW THE PAPER IS MARKED # How a six-mark chemistry question is actually marked The six-marker is the question students fear most and prepare for least, and the way it is marked is not a secret. The examiners explain it every summer, in the report. By [Eivan Kolchin](https://www.kerfox.app/about) 7 September 2026 ## Marked twice Most questions on a chemistry paper are marked by points. The scheme lists the creditable statements, the examiner ticks the ones on the page, and the marks are the ticks. A six-mark extended-response question is marked differently, and the difference is the whole reason so many answers full of correct chemistry score three. The examiner reads the whole answer first and decides which **level** it belongs to, from the shape of the reasoning rather than from any one fact in it. Only then do they decide the mark within that level, from how much of the indicative content, the list of chemistry the question was looking for, the answer contains. Two marks per level, three levels, six marks. The level is a judgement about how the answer is put together; the mark inside it is a count. That order matters. An answer that contains every fact on the indicative content list as a heap of unconnected sentences is capped at the level its shape earns, however much it knows. ## What the levels mean Three levels, two marks in each. The level is decided by how the points are linked; the mark inside it by how many of the expected points are there. In plain terms: Level 1 is relevant chemistry with no chain between the statements. Level 2 is mostly relevant chemistry with some of the links made and some of the precision. Level 3 is a line of reasoning: clear, precise, and connected, so that each point follows from the one before and the reader could not reorder the sentences without breaking the argument. The examiners’ own description of a strong answer, from the June 2023 report, is worth quoting because it is also the instruction.[1](https://www.kerfox.app/blog/how-a-six-marker-is-marked#source-1) AQA, A-LEVEL CHEMISTRY 7405/3, JUNE 2023, GENERAL “Students are encouraged to think about aiming to make a sequence of clear, precise, linked points to put across their ideas with the aim of ‘ticking off’ as much of the indicative content as possible.” Read it as a list of three separate demands. *Sequence* is the level. *Precise* is the mark scheme word, the same rule that runs through every other question on the paper. *Ticking off the indicative content* is the mark within the level. An answer can fail on any one of the three independently. ## What the examiners saw The June 2023 Paper 3 six-marker asked students to explain why one iron solution effervesced with carbonate and another did not. The report records that “only about 10% of students were able to access level 3”, the same as the previous year, and it says why: the commonest omissions were the two indicative-content points that gave the *reason*. “Many students thought that it was enough to simply say that CO₂ is produced with L but not M and did not go on to discuss the reasons for this in terms of the greater acidity of Fe³⁺(aq) compared with Fe²⁺(aq).”[1](https://www.kerfox.app/blog/how-a-six-marker-is-marked#source-1) That is the level ceiling in action. Stating what happens is a point. Explaining why it happens is the link that turns the points into a sequence, and without it the answer cannot leave Level 2 however many other true things it says. The general comments make the same diagnosis in one clause: relatively few reached Level 3, “usually due to a failure to properly describe a reason”.[1](https://www.kerfox.app/blog/how-a-six-marker-is-marked#source-1) The other way to lose the top marks is to reach the level and then contradict yourself inside it. The June 2018 Paper 2 report, on the benzene six-marker, records that Level 3 answers were written by 15.3% of students, and that only a third of those gained full marks, because “their explanations often contained errors such as ‘hydration’ for hydrogenation, or unclear discussion about bond breaking during the addition of hydrogen”.[2](https://www.kerfox.app/blog/how-a-six-marker-is-marked#source-2) The shape earned Level 3. The precision inside it did not earn six. ## Right plus wrong equals wrong That last ruling is the general rule showing through, and it is the one students least expect. The levels system does not deduct for small weaknesses inside an otherwise strong answer; the examiner finds the band whose description fits best and does not go hunting for reasons to drop it. But the indicative content still binds at the top. Full marks need an answer with no incorrect statement contradicting a correct one, and a wrong word placed next to the right chemistry is exactly such a statement. So the safest six-mark answer is not the longest. Every extra sentence is another chance to write “hydration” where “hydrogenation” was meant, and an extra true sentence adds nothing once the content is covered. Write the sequence, write it precisely, and stop. ## How to write one 1. **Find the question in the question.** A six-marker nearly always asks you to explain a difference or a change. Name the two things being compared before you write anything else, and make sure your answer explains why they differ, not only that they do. 2. **Write the chain, not the pile.** Each sentence should be a consequence of the one before. “Because”, “so”, and “therefore” are not padding here; they are the links the level is decided on. The report says a list layout is not appropriate, and the reason is that a list has no links in it. 3. **Use the paper’s own words.** The indicative content is written in the specification’s vocabulary. The mark inside the level is a count of those words, correctly used. 4. **Include the reason for every observation.** “CO₂ is produced with L and not M” is the observation. The acidity of the hexaaqua ion that makes it happen is the reason, and the reason is the mark most answers were missing. 5. **Stop when the content is covered.** A wrong extra sentence can cost a mark; a right extra sentence cannot earn one. One honest note on what this post is. The mechanics of levels marking are described here in our own words from the boards’ published instructions to examiners; the quotations are from two AQA reports, and the claims about what examiners saw are about those two papers. Other boards use the same structure with their own descriptors, and the safe reading is that the shape of a good answer is the same everywhere and the exact wording of each level is the board’s own. ## Sources 1. AQA (2023). Report on the Examination, A-level Chemistry 7405/3, June 2023. [filestore.aqa.org.uk/…/AQA-74053-WRE-JUN23.PDF](https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2023/june/AQA-74053-WRE-JUN23.PDF)Opens by naming lack of precision and "lack of clear application of chemical terminology" as the commonest reasons for lost marks. Q01.1: "proton donor" refused because the proton is accepted back later in the mechanism. Q01.2: a positive answer is needed, so "not with a Bunsen burner" scores nothing. Q01.5: two layers form because the liquids are immiscible, and the upper one is "less dense (NOT lighter)". Q01.6: "dehydration" refused for a drying agent because the term means something else in chemistry. 2. AQA (2018). Report on the Examination, A-level Chemistry 7405/2, June 2018. [filestore.aqa.org.uk/…/AQA-74052-WRE-JUN18.PDF](https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/sample-papers-and-mark-schemes/2018/june/AQA-74052-WRE-JUN18.PDF)Q02.2: students lost mark point 3 by calling nucleophiles electron donors rather than electron pair donors. Q07.2: "electrophilic addition" and "reduction" were frequent wrong names for the mechanism. Q07.3: "HCl gas", the name of a product, was given where an observation was required. Q06.1: "hydration" appeared for hydrogenation in Level 3 answers. ## Read next - [ THE MARK SCHEME WORD ### Active site, binding site or receptor: the word AQA is waiting for An enzyme has an active site. An antibody has a binding site. A cell has a receptor. AQA’s examiner reports name the wrong one, four times, on three papers. 7 September 2026 ](https://www.kerfox.app/blog/active-site-is-not-the-answer) - [ THE MARK SCHEME WORD ### Less dense, not lighter: six words one chemistry paper refused AQA’s report on the June 2023 A-level Chemistry Paper 3 refuses six answers by name and gives its reasons. Each ruling, and the word to write instead. 7 September 2026 ](https://www.kerfox.app/blog/less-dense-not-lighter) - [ THE MARK SCHEME WORD ### Electron pair donor: the word “pair” is the mark AQA’s June 2018 Chemistry Paper 2 report says students who called a nucleophile an electron donor lost the mark. The missing word, and what else was refused. 7 September 2026 ](https://www.kerfox.app/blog/electron-pair-donor) - [ STUDY AND WELLBEING ### An extra hour of revision costs about eight minutes of sleep Five hundred students kept diaries for a fortnight. Studying more than usual cost little, and it hurt the next day only when the hour had come out of sleep. 7 September 2026 ](https://www.kerfox.app/blog/an-extra-hour-of-revision) WHERE THIS IS BUILT IN Kerfox marks written answers against the board’s own words, so the word a mark scheme refuses is the word the app refuses too, with the reason. It is free, and it is in closed testing. [Join the waitlist](https://www.kerfox.app/waitlist)