The art of marking art

Skateboards, socks, and a lot of sticky tape are standard-issue tools in the annual logistical challenge of marking level 3 NCEA and Scholarship visual art folios.

Each year, the floor of the Walter Nash Basketball stadium in Lower Hutt becomes a huge patchwork of art as thousands of art folios are laid end to end for marking.

Senior art teachers spend hours examining the paintings before giving final marks. Then, the job of lifting and sorting the artwork is done, a new batch of around 500 folios is laid down and the process begins again.

It's a huge job requiring 35 days of intense work.

University students are employed to do the sorting and 'laying out' of the folios. They also follow behind the markers, checking and collecting mark tickets.

To ease their workload, the students pull themselves along on modified skateboards avoiding the extensive bending that would otherwise be required.

All the markers and their helpers wear socks to avoid damaging folios.

There are some safety precautions that have to be taken, as some folios arrive with glass and even nails as part of the artwork. Each one of these must be marked with a flag so that no one gets injured.

Some folios are selected to exemplify examples of levels of achievement and are later photographed for inclusion in a booklet for the following year.