How transparent is the GCSE, AS and A level exam appeals process in England?

When the exam results are announced each August, the media are, understandably, full of pictures of jolly teenagers jumping for joy. As happened this year, with record A levels.

But not all students are euphoric. Some are in tears, with grades lower than they had been hoping for. And some of those will fear something has gone wrong, and that maybe they truly merited a higher grade. They don’t know, of course, for there is no ‘official’ comparator – mock grades don’t count, nor do UCAS A level predictions. The only way to find out is to seek an expert second opinion – a re-mark by a senior examiner, whose academic judgement is accepted as authoritative.

I wonder how many students who appeal (or rather ‘challenge’, to use Ofqual’s preferred term) believe that their scripts will be re-marked? Many, I suspect. 

And how many are aware that an appeal might confirm a grade that is different from, and perhaps lower than, the grade that a senior examiner would have awarded? My hunch is very few.

So what actually happens when a grade is ‘challenged’ and a ‘review of marking’ requested?

To find out, a student, or a parent, might look at the guidance provided on each of the English exam boards’ websites. There they will read a description of a ‘review of marking’ along the lines of ‘an examiner will review the mark and check for marking errors’. 

Might someone who expects that a ‘review of marking’ triggers a re-mark read that description and think, “That’s fine. A ‘check for marking errors’ must be a re-mark – how else might that check be done?”. 

That person, however, is mistaken. A ‘check for marking errors’ tests for compliance with the mark scheme, and that the mark is not ‘out of tolerance’. Which is very different from a re-mark. In particular, a ‘check for marking errors’ fails to discover, and correct, a mark that is fully ‘legitimate’, but corresponds to a grade different from a senior examiner’s grade.

A paradox: two legitimate marks, two different grades

This throws a spotlight on a perhaps surprising feature of the exam system: the apparent paradox that two equally legitimate marks can result in two different grades.

This paradox, however, is easily resolved, for it is a consequence of the familiar fact that different, fully qualified, examiners can give the same script (slightly) different marks – for example, 72/160 or 74/160 for, say, GCSE English. Neither of these marks have any ‘marking errors’; they are just legitimate differences in academic opinion.

This is important, for if the 3:4 grade boundary is set at 73, 72/160 results in grade 3, 74/160 in grade 4. The grade on the student’s certificate therefore depends on the lottery of who did the marking. Only one of those grades can be the senior examiner’s grade (referred to by Ofqual as the “definitive” or “true” grade – see pages 6 and 20 here), and so the other must be “non-definitive”.

Suppose that the mark actually given is 72/160, resulting in grade 3, but that the mark that would have been given by a senior examiner (or someone who thought like a senior examiner) is 74/160, corresponding to the “definitive” grade 4.

If the student seeks a ‘review of marking’, the mark 72/160 will, correctly, be deemed as fully compliant with the mark scheme, and no ‘marking errors’ will be discovered, for there are none. The originally-awarded “non-definitive” grade 3 will therefore be confirmed, even though the senior examiner’s “definitive” grade is grade 4.

Why the ‘marking error’ test is unjust

The fact that a ‘review of marking’ allows for a re-mark only if a ‘marking error’ is discovered has a most significant consequence: it denies appeals attributable to legitimate differences in the academic opinions of the examiner (or team of examiners) who happened to mark a particular script and the appropriate subject senior examiner. This, to my mind, is not only important but also unjust, as I trust my example of the GCSE English script legitimately marked 74 or 76 illustrates.

The person at the centre of all this is of course the distraught student who fears that something might be wrong with that grade 3 for GCSE English – to whom I’m sure all this talk of ‘reviews of marking’, ‘marking errors’, ‘compliance with the mark scheme’, ‘tolerance’… is gobbledegook.

Which takes me back to the information readily available on exam board websites.

How to make the appeals process more transparent

Yes, statements such as ‘an examiner will review the mark and check for marking errors’ are true.

But they are by no means the whole truth, or – to my mind – anywhere close.

In particular, no exam board explicitly states ‘a review of marking is not a re-mark’. 

I wonder why not, for that seems to me to be highly relevant information. Especially since that point is made – in bold letters too – on pages 6 and 7 of the JCQ Post Results Services booklet. Perhaps the boards would defend their position by saying “if this is stated in the JCQ booklet, there is no need for us to repeat it”. I disagree. The exam board website is likely to be the first port-of-call, and my view is that the information should be all the truth, not just a selective part.

Which leads me to a second absence of transparency. None of the boards, nor JCQ, explain the significance of the ‘marking error’ test, and that a candidate unfortunate enough to have had a script given a legitimate mark, but a “non-definitive” grade, can never have that grade corrected to the corresponding “definitive” grade. So that grade 3, ‘fail’, for GCSE English can never be corrected to the “definitive” grade 4, ‘pass’ – which is devastating for the student.

Two ways to make the appeals process fairer

Let me close with two suggestions.

The first is that the exam boards should ensure that their websites show the full truth – failing to do that might create a suspicion that there is something to hide.

The second is to revoke the decision, taken in 2016, to introduce the ‘marking error’ test. Candidates who are concerned that something might have gone wrong should get what they need, and want – an expert second opinion as achieved by a re-mark by a trusted, authoritative, subject senior examiner.

Dennis Sherwood is an independent management consultant, and author of ‘Missing the Mark – Why so many school exam grades are wrong, and how to get results we can trust’ (Canbury Press, 2022)