How you can challenge your exam results if you aren’t happy with them
As teenagers receive their A-level results and more nervously await their GCSE results next week, here’s what you can do if you’re not happy with your grades
You’ve done your best, worked hard and thought you did well on the day.
So what happens if you open your exam results to discover you haven’t got the grade you hoped for and think the marking is wrong or unfair?
The first point of contact for students or parents with questions about the results should be the school or college, advises independent exam regulator, Qualifications Wales.
Where there are concerns about the original marking or moderation, candidates can ask for a review by the exam board to check if the original marker or moderator made an error.
Last year nearly 16,000 reviews of marking in Wales were requested, a vast majority of them for GCSEs.
As a result 23% of GCSE marks reviewed saw a grade changed and just under 20% of AS and A-level reviews led to a grade change.
Overall 47% of result reviews led to changed marks, but a mark change does not necessarily mean a grade change up or down.
And, of course, results will only be changed if an error is found and you only have a week to put in a request for a review via your school or college.
August 23 is the deadline to request A and AS mark reviews
For A and AS results candidates have until Thursday, August 23 to seek priority reviews of marking for A-level, where a university place is in question.
August 23 is also the deadline for requests for copies of AS or A-level scripts where a school or college is considering a review of marking.
For those not being fast-tracked because a university place is not at stake, September 20 is the normal deadline for schools and colleges to make requests for papers to be reviewed for marking.
August 30 is the deadline to seek GCSE mark reviews
GCSE results come out on Thursday, August 23. The deadline for requests for copies of GCSE scripts is August 30.
Exam boards then have until the September 6 deadline to send back to schools and colleges all scripts requested to support reviews of marking.
Will I have to pay?
The WJEC website shows fees of between £11 and £48 depending on what is requested in the review.
Schools and colleges applying for the review on behalf of candidates usually ask them to pay the fee before the request is made. If marks change the money is refunded.
■ For more information see: www.wjec.co.uk/exam-officers/ post-results-service These are the most commonly challenged grades
The most commonly challenged GCSE grades in Wales last year were grade D (59.1% of reviews) and grade B (15.1% of reviews).
For AS and A-level, the most commonly challenged grades in Wales were grade B (32.3% of reviews) and grade C (27.2% of reviews).
Overall, 53.3% of reviews requested resulted in no mark change and, crucially, a mark change does not necessarily result in a grade change for the student. At GCSE, of the reviews requested, 77.5% had no grade change. At AS and A-level, 80.4% of the reviews had no grade change.
Last year a total 12,930 reviews of marking were requested for GCSE assessments, compared to 8,625 in 2016 – an increase of 49.9%.
The regulator said some of this increase may be explained by the 12.3% increase in entries for GCSE qualifications in summer 2017 compared with 2016.
This rise in entries was largely driven by the replacement of a single GCSE maths with two new GCSEs in Wales and an increase in the number of students in Year 10 taking their exams early.
The introduction of new qualifications may also have influenced some centres’ decisions about whether to request a review of marking.
For AS and A-level assessments in Wales, 3,020 reviews were requested in 2017 compared to 3,605 in 2016, a 16.2% fall. Some of this decrease may be explained by the 6.2% drop in entries for AS and A-level qualifications in summer 2017 compared with 2016.
Although the figures for requests for reviews last year seem large the numbers of GCSE, AS and A-level grades challenged in Wales in 2017 represent only 2.5% of all grades and those changed represent just 0.5% of all grades, according to Qualifications Wales.