AS and A Level Geography: When I am marking the NEA do I need to annotate the mark recording sheet and the candidates' work?

Yes, please do annotate the mark recording sheet (MRS). It is up to you if you also want to annotate your students work as well, for some teachers / departments this can support marking and internal moderation. If your annotation of the MRS is detailed, including page references then this would duplicate work for markers.

The Principal Moderators Report (2019) p5, explains this in some depth:

The process of moderation depends entirely on effective annotation by the original assessor. The moderator hopes to see comments that (a) relate directly to specific qualitative phrases used in the marking criteria, and (b) direct reference to places in the candidates’ written report where evidence of work meeting the standard of the criteria can be found. Where the assessor provides this level of annotation, and understands the marking criteria, moderation is a simple of job of confirming the decisions made by the original assessor. A large number of centres provide effective levels of annotation. However, in a significant number of cases, the level of annotation did not provide sufficient evidence for the moderator to do his/her job.

In order to provide sufficient and effective annotation please:

• Encourage all candidates to paginate their reports, then, refer to specific pages in the candidates’ reports where evidence of achievement at certain levels can be seen.
• Provide concise qualitative statements on pages 2-7 of the Mark Recording Sheet that relate to the bullet points in the marking criteria.
• Where possible, provide a very brief indication on the candidates’ written reports to show where significant achievements have been made. If used (and these annotations are very helpful) these comments must be summative. Never use formative comments on a candidate’s NEA.