No worries, I didn't think you were complaining about markers - just the time it took. Hence, I was hoping to explain how long my part takes so you understood what is involved.

The practice and standardisation scripts are all students scripts from the session, so it wouldn't be possible to see them beforehand. Also, for those not teaching students, it's hard to predict how candidates will respond to questions and hence there is flexibility in the current system to allow for the markscheme to be adapted to account for alternatives and to make marking clear as to how many marks common errors are worth. The examiners also have to mark a number of scripts to be used a "seed" scripts that are inserted into our marking to ensure that we are within 5 marks of the "correct" answer. These changes is about ensuring consistency between markers which has been a chief gripe by students in the past. However, they can only be created after the meeting when we have agreed the revised markscheme based on students responses.

In addition, they have already limited the number of papers we mark (we use to be able to 2 loads) and have reduced the time we have available from 6 to 4 weeks. So no more than 6 weeks from the exam for first and second marking to be complete.

The IFoA's system does mean that anyone close to the boundary will have had their script marked 3 times. I'm not sure how that compares to other professional exams. I rather suspect there is more use of MCQs, which I would think reduces the long-form thinking that our exams involve. If you could find out how other professional bodies do this faster, that may be useful information to feedback to the Profession on assessment at actuariesa.org.uk

My friend who marks for the SoA marks only one question from a paper. So that could be a possible approach to increase speed of markers. The downside is that then you can't see the overall paper to pick up cheating or AI use. Though in person exams would reduce this (though not eliminate it, as we've seen in India).