Section rules: scoring, sections, and moving questions
Some assessments have sections where every question must be answered, and others where students get a choice — “answer two questions from this section” — or where a marking guide’s grid doesn’t split the sections the paper actually has. The Section rules dialog lets you set each section’s scoring rule, add or remove sections, and move questions between them, so the paper totals and each student’s score come out right no matter how it’s structured.
This article explains the scoring rules, how to restructure sections, and how both affect marks.
Opening Section rules
On a submission review page, each section has a header band (for example Section A: Reading) with a Section rules button at its right-hand end — a gear icon plus the label; on a narrow screen only the gear shows. Click it to open the dialog.
If the assessment has no sections at all yet — common on older assessments, or on a marking guide that prints one combined grid with no section split — the dialog opens with a single seeded All section instead of refusing to open. You’re never blocked from getting in to set this up.
The two scoring rules
Every section in the dialog’s Sections list has a title box and a Scoring rule dropdown.
Every question counts
The default. Every question in the section counts toward the total. If a section has three 10-mark questions, the section is worth 30 marks and all three are scored for every student.
Use this for standard sections where all questions are compulsory.
Best of group
Use this for “answer X of Y” sections — for example, a section with three essay questions where the student only has to answer one, or four questions where they pick two.
Choosing it reveals a keep [N] of [M] field — enter how many of the section’s answers should count toward the total. For each student, Marking.ai marks every question they attempted in the section, keeps the N highest-scoring answers, and excludes the rest from the total — so each student automatically gets their best result without you deciding by hand.
The two-section rule. A paper where students answer one question from each of two groups — say a Shakespeare question and a 19th-century-novel question — needs two Best-of-group sections, each keeping 1. Putting every question into one Best-of-group section keeping 1 is the common mistake: it counts only the single highest-scoring answer across both groups instead of one from each.
Adding and restructuring sections
- Add a section sits below the Sections list. A new section starts with no questions — move some into it (see below) before saving.
- The bin icon on a section row removes that section. A section can’t be removed while it still has questions in it.
- Under Which section is each question in?, every question in the paper is listed with a small A / B toggle — tap it to move that question into the other section. With more than six sections, the toggle becomes a dropdown listing them all.
- A question belongs to exactly one section. Moving it moves it out of the section it was in — there’s no way to put a question in two sections, or in none.
Checking the total before you save
The Paper total banner at the top of the dialog updates live as you change rules or move questions, showing the old and new total, so you can confirm the mark is right before saving. On a marking guide that printed a specific total for a section, changing that section’s rule is what makes the banner (and the real total) move — saving with no edits leaves a printed total untouched.
Click Save rules to apply. Two things worth knowing about what happens next:
- This rescores, it doesn’t re-mark. Saving recalculates totals from the marks already on file for every affected submission — no AI call, no credits used, nothing gets re-marked.
- Every section needs at least one question, or Save rules is blocked.
What you’ll see after saving
On the submission review screen, questions that didn’t make the cut for a student in a Best-of-group section appear collapsed and greyed out with an Excluded chip. They’re never hidden or locked — expand any excluded question to see the student’s attempt and its tentative mark, so nothing about the scoring is a black box.
A note on marking guides with no section split
Some marking guides — AQA mark schemes are a common example — print one combined grid covering every question and never repeat the paper’s “answer one from each section” instruction, because that instruction lives on the question paper, not the guide. Extraction can legitimately produce a single flat list of questions from a guide like that. That’s expected, and it’s exactly what this dialog exists to fix — it isn’t a sign your marking guide’s formatting is unclear.
Asking Marko to open it for you
You can ask Marko to open this dialog — “set up section rules for this assessment” or similar — and he’ll open it for you, jumping to the right section if you named one. Marko doesn’t set the rules himself: you review the live total and click Save rules.
When to use which rule
| Situation | Rule |
|---|---|
| All questions in the section are compulsory | Every question counts |
| Students choose which questions to answer (“answer 2 of 4”) | Best of group, keeping 2 |
| A section has alternative questions (“either Q2 or Q3”) | Best of group, keeping 1 |
| Students answer one question from each of two groups | Two Best-of-group sections, each keeping 1 |
Need help?
Open the Account menu and choose Chat to a human, ask Marko, or email connect@marking.ai.
FAQs
What happens if a student answers more than N questions in a Best-of-group section?
Marking.ai marks them all and keeps the best N. The extra answers are excluded from the total but stay visible (greyed out, with an Excluded chip) on the review screen.
Does “Best of group” change the marks I can edit?
No. Every attempted question is still marked, and you can still review and override any mark — including on excluded questions. The scoring rule only decides which marks add up to the official total.
Will saving re-mark my students’ work or use credits?
No. Saving rescores the marks already on file — it doesn’t call the AI marker and doesn’t use credits.
Can different students have different questions counted?
Yes. Because Marking.ai keeps each student’s own best answers in a Best-of-group section, the specific questions that count can vary from student to student in the same class.
My marking guide doesn’t show section headings — is something wrong with the extraction?
No. Some real mark schemes print one combined grid and leave the “answer one from each section” rule off the page entirely. Use Section rules to split the paper the way it’s actually structured — that’s what it’s for.