Your school or college can take it up with the awarding body if you feel you’ve been dealt an injustice with your exam or coursework results. Here’s how you can take action.
Every year thousands of GCSE and A-level students are awarded the wrong results for their work, so it’s no wonder that more people are lodging enquires and appeals. Nearly 22,000 students in England, Wales and Northern Ireland had their GCSE and A-level grades changed after they queried their results in 2007.
Who to speak to
The first thing you've got to do is speak to one of your teachers at your school or college. Students can't make enquiries directly with the examining board; everything has got to go through the school unless you are an external candidate.
Your school or college should support an enquiry on your behalf, so it's important you speak to a teacher or lecturer at the earliest opportunity as there are deadlines to meet.
What are the deadlines?
This year’s A-level results are published on August 20th and GCSE’s on August 27th. You can have a priority re-mark if you need an A-level paper to be re-marked quickly because your university place depends on your result, then you can have a priority re-mark. The deadlines for enquires are:
How long will it take?
Depending on the examining body marking your paper, the time it takes to deal with an enquiry can vary. The maximum time it will take an A-level priority re-mark is 18 days. If it’s a standard A-level or GCSE enquiry the period is 30 days.
Does it cost me anything?
It’s up to your school or college who pays for the re-mark. Normally the school or college supporting the enquiry will foot the bill.
A clerical re-check will cost around £10. This is where exam papers are checked to ensure that every question has been marked and the total awarded for each paper has been correctly calculated. A full re-mark of examinations scripts will cost around £30 to £40. This is when all parts of the examination are re-marked.
Overview for GCSE, AS-level and A-level examinations
Once you've spoken to your teacher or form tutor, this is what should happen next:
What about coursework?
If you're unhappy about a coursework grade then speak to a teacher at your school or college. Coursework remarks are a bit more complicated than examination re-marks. If you want to get your coursework unit re-marked then the examining body will have to re-moderate the whole of the school or colleges coursework. This means the student's school or college needs to be sure they want to take it forward.
For undergraduates
Every university has their own policy on appealing against exam and coursework results, so you'll need to check with your student advice centre to find out more about your university's procedures.
2010-10-24 00:00:05
Examinations are the most biased way of judging someone's academic abilities.
2010-11-14 23:12:17
It's not the only way but then the logistics of examining people in a format other than that.. would make it unfair on the predecessors who passed or failed using the system?
2010-11-14 23:57:33
What other ways are there? Coursework? It still gets sent off to an EXAM board to be modified. A person's over all grade should be judged on their work throughout an entire academic year, not just based on one sitting, examined by one being who has the power to say "oh yes, this is right, this isn't". It should also be judged on a persons effort and attitude towards their chosen subject too. Because effort and attitude all works together to form your over all grade anyway. And I'm not on about 'predecessors' who's passed/failed before. I merely said it's a really bias method, as it consists of very few questions (chosen by the exam board), out of God knows how many possibilities of questions which the student has to learn throughout the module.
2011-02-09 00:03:57
An exam is designed to be the most stressful thing known. It is not the best way to judge the abilities of somebody.
Answer correctly and win
funky points every day!
Q1 = 5 points
Q2 = 10 points
Q3 = 15 points
