Expected grades due in June which can then be reviewed

PUPILS will be told their expected exam results in June and can ask for them to be looked at again before they are submitted by teachers who assessed them.

Schools and colleges will share provisional centre-determined grades with their learners by June, exams regulator Qualifications Wales confirmed yesterday.

It added: “A learner can ask their school or college to review provisional grades and/or check for any errors before they are submitted to WJEC.”

All exams were cancelled again this summer, due to Covid, and those running them are keen to avoid the grades fiasco of last year.

GCSEs, AS-levels and A-levels will be graded by teachers after plans for assessments to replace them were dumped.

The appeals process has now been finalised by the regulator.

There will be a three-stage process. By June schools and colleges will share provisional centre-determined grades with their learners. A learner can ask their school or college to review provisional grades and/or check for any errors before they are submitted to exam board WJEC.

After results day in August, a learner can appeal to WJEC that the grade judgement that their school or college has made is unreasonable and/or a procedural error has been made.

Following completion of the stagetwo appeal, learners can request an Exam Procedures Review Service (EPRS) review from Qualifications Wales to check whether WJEC has followed their procedures correctly.

Final qualification grades will not be issued to learners until the results days, which are August 10 for AS- and A-levels and August 12 for GCSEs. Those dates were brought forward after England brought forward its results days.

A review into exam results chaos last year was highly critical of exam regulator Qualifications Wales and exam board the WJEC after thousands of results were downgraded.

Philip Blaker, chief executive of Qualifications Wales, said: “We’ve been engaging with the Design and Delivery Advisory Group and WJEC to consider how we can implement an effective appeals process.

“We are also mindful of the recommendations of the independent review into summer 2020 and that we should ensure the appeals process is fair and workable.”