Official Statistics

Background information for reviews of marking and moderation for GCSE, AS and A level: summer 2022 exam series

Published 15 December 2022

Applies to England

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This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/reviews-of-marking-and-moderation-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-summer-2022-exam-series/background-information-for-reviews-of-marking-and-moderation-for-gcse-as-and-a-level-summer-2022-exam-series

1. Purpose

In this release, Ofqual presents data on all reviews of marking, reviews of moderation and administrative error reviews (collectively referred to as ‘reviews’ and formerly known as ‘enquiries about results’) requested for all GCSE, AS and A level, assessments taken during the summer 2022 exam series.

2. Geographical coverage

This report presents data on the number of reviews requested in England. Four exam boards offer GCSE, AS and A level qualifications in England:

  • AQA Education (AQA)
  • Oxford Cambridge and RSA Examinations (OCR)
  • Pearson Education Ltd. (Pearson)
  • WJEC-CBAC Ltd. (WJEC/Eduqas)

3. Description

3.1 The review of marking process

Every year, the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ), a membership organisation of 8 awarding organisations, including the four exam boards in England offering general qualifications, publish information and guidance for schools and colleges on making use of the post-results services for the relevant exam series. The GCSE, and AS and A level Qualification Level Conditions and Requirements (the Conditions) published by Ofqual outline the requirements for reviews of marking, reviews of moderation, and administrative error reviews that exam boards must follow for GCSE, AS and A level qualifications.

If a school or college or an individual student is concerned that an error has occurred when assessment material has been marked, the school or college can decide to seek a review from the exam board. Exam boards only accept review requests through schools and colleges, and not from students, and require consent from the student to request reviews of marking and administrative error reviews. Private students are the exception; the Conditions require exam boards to accept review requests directly from private students.

A whole qualification (eg A level English literature) will comprise a number of assessments, for example, one or more examinations, and/or one or more non-examined assessment (NEA) components. Reviews are requested for each assessment individually and not for the qualification as a whole. Often reviews are requested for multiple assessments that a student has taken for one qualification. This is why the total number of qualification grades challenged is always lower than the total number of reviews of marking. Reviews of moderation are different, as one review involves a number of students. However, the vast majority of reviews requested are reviews of marking and so, overall, the number of grades challenged is always lower than the number of reviews requested.

In some cases, multiple reviews are requested for the same assessment, for example, an administrative error review may be requested and then a review of marking. Where an assessment is made up of more than one part (known as sub-components) and a student must complete all sub-components to complete the assessment (for example, an exam with a multiple-choice element and a written element), a review can be made on an individual sub-component in some cases.

If the review shows that marking or administrative errors have been made and the student’s result is incorrect, the exam board is required to change the mark to correct the error. In some cases, this may affect the overall qualification grade, which will then also be adjusted. For reviews of moderation, grades can only be confirmed or raised following review. Exam boards charge a fee if qualification grades are not changed following review, or, for a review of moderation, if the original school or college marks are not reinstated.

The Conditions state that exam boards must set their own timescales within which they should complete reviews and report the outcome for GCSE, AS and A level qualifications. They must do so within the timeframe of ‘key dates’ we have prescribed. These provide a common minimum window for centres and/or students, and allow exam boards to set common dates if they wish – which they have so far all chosen to do. The dates the exam boards have chosen to set are detailed in the sections on each type of review below.

Each exam board offers three post-results services for reviewing exam papers and internal assessment:

  • An administrative error review for an individual assessment (‘Service 1’)
  • A review of marking for an individual assessment (‘Service 2’)
  • A review of moderation of the school or college’s internal assessment using the sample of students’ work that was used in the initial moderation (‘Service 3’)

3.2 Administrative error review of an individual student’s script

The exam board checks the script to make sure that every question has been marked and the total number of marks awarded for that script is correctly added up and recorded. This year exam boards stipulated that schools and colleges must have requested this service by 29 September 2022. The deadline set by exam boards by which they must aim to notify schools and colleges about the outcomes of administrative error reviews is 10 calendar days from the date of receipt.

3.3 Review of marking for an individual assessment

A reviewer considers the marking of the original examiner to determine, in respect of each task in the assessment for which marks could have been awarded, whether the marking included any marking error(s). The exam board also does a full administrative error review if this has not been previously requested for the assessment.

Exam boards typically operate two priority levels:

  • Non-priority – exam boards stipulated that schools and colleges must have requested this by 29 September 2022.
  • Priority – schools and colleges can request this if the student’s place at further or higher education depends on the outcome of a review or if a quick response is desired. All exam boards offer priority reviews of marking for AS and A level assessments. However, only Pearson currently offer this service for GCSE assessments. Exam boards stipulated that requests for a priority service 2 review must have been submitted by 25 August 2022 for AS and A level, and GCSE qualifications.

The deadline set by exam boards by which they must aim to notify schools and colleges about the outcomes of reviews of marking is 20 calendar days for the non-priority service and 15 calendar days for the priority service from the date of receipt.

3.4 Review of moderation of the school or college’s internal assessment using the sample of students’ work

Under Ofqual rules, students must be given the opportunity by an exam board to seek a review of the centre assessed mark that their school or college determines, prior to the mark being submitted to the exam board. Exam boards do not collect data on such reviews.

A review of moderation service is not available for individual students as the review of moderation is usually undertaken on a sample of students’ work to judge if there were any errors with the initial moderation or with any adjustments made to the centre’s original marks as a result of the moderation.

The exam board reviews the initial moderation to make sure that the moderation was carried out correctly and in accordance with the marking criteria and/or if there were any errors made in any adjustments to the centre’s original marks as a result of the moderation. If an error in the moderation process is found it must be corrected. Exam boards stipulated that this service must have been requested by 29 September 2022. The deadline set by exam boards by which they must aim to notify schools and colleges about the outcomes of reviews of moderation is 35 calendar days from the moderator receiving the original sample of work from the school or college.

3.5 Appeals

If a school or college has requested a review but is still dissatisfied with the outcome, it can make an appeal to the exam board. There is also a final stage available through the Examination Procedures Review Service. A report presenting the data on appeals for the 2021 to 2022 academic year (including the June 2022 series) will be published by Ofqual in Spring 2023.

4. Context

When considering the data presented in this release, it is important to note a number of changes to qualifications and requirements for reviews of marking that are likely to have impacted on these figures.

4.1 Grading in summer 2020 and summer 2021

In summer 2020 and summer 2021, exams were cancelled due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Therefore, no reviews of marking or moderation took place and there is no data presented for these years.

4.2 Grading in summer 2022

Whilst summer 2022 saw the return of exams as well as the review of marking and moderation process, in recognition of the disruption experienced by students and caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, a package of support was made available to students sitting exams in 2022. Additionally, grade outcomes reflected a staging post between 2021 and 2019 grade outcomes. As such, variations in reviews of marking and moderation in summer 2022 with previous years may reflect the different approach to grading. Therefore, comparisons with summer 2019 should be made with caution as the arrangements were not the same.

4.3 Changes to the review of marking process

In August 2016, Ofqual introduced Conditions which specify the requirements for reviews of marking and moderation that exam boards offering qualifications in England must follow. The key changes to the review of marking process following the introduction of the Conditions were as follows:

  • A mark must only be changed following an administrative error review, a review of marking or a review of moderation if an error occurred. The reason for change of mark must be recorded.
  • Exam boards must have their own review processes and publish these.
  • Exam boards are required to train reviewers (including those undertaking reviews of moderation) prior to undertaking reviews and monitor their performance as reviewers.

In summer 2022, Ofqual rules requiring the exam boards to make marked GCSE scripts available to centres before their deadline for requesting a review of marking came into effect. These requirements were originally intended to come into effect from summer 2020, but in the absence of summer exams in 2020 and 2021, they applied for the first time this series. This change was intended to increase the information that people had about how students had performed in an exam to inform their decision about whether or not to apply for a review of marking or moderation; and as such, it could possibly have affected the numbers of reviews of marking or moderation.

5. Data source

Data used in this release was submitted to Ofqual by AQA, OCR, Pearson and WJEC.

Data for AS and A levels is presented jointly, unless otherwise specified.

Data on the total number of GCSE, AS and A level unit/component entries and qualification certifications presented in Table 1 and 2 of the data tables accompanying this release is collected every exam series from exam boards in a separate data return. Data on the number of qualification certificates awarded in each subject presented in Table 7 and 8 was supplied by the JCQ and is published in their GCSE and AS and A level results day reports.

6. Limitations

Reviews are conducted on individual assessments and so it is possible to request more than one review for a single qualification that a student has taken. It is therefore possible that, where more than one review has been requested for the same student and qualification, more than one service may have been used. For example, consider a student who has taken GCSE biology and whose school has decided to request a review for two assessments that the student has taken for this qualification. The school may decide to submit both assessments for a review of marking or they may decide to submit one assessment for an administrative error review and one assessment for a review of marking.

Breaking down the number of grades challenged and changed by service becomes problematic when schools submit more than one assessment for the same student and qualification to more than one review service. In the example given above, only one grade is challenged but two services are used to do so. Counting the grade challenged in both administrative error review and review of marking figures would mean double counting it, which would be incorrect. Therefore, in the breakdown of reviews requested and grades challenged and changed by service, students who have had their grades challenged through more than one service have not been included in the grades challenged and changed figures. These students are however included in all other figures reported and Tables 5 and 6 in the data tables published along with the report include a breakdown of the number of grades challenged and changed through multiple services by exam board.

When a review of moderation is requested for a unit by a centre, the exam boards provide us with data for all the students in the centre who took the unit, regardless of the outcome of the review.

Ofqual cannot guarantee that the data collected are correct, although it expects exam boards to send correct data. There are a number of validation and data check processes that are in place. Summary data is sent to exam boards for checking and confirmation. The figures reported in this release reflect the status of reviews at the data cut-off date - 15 November 2022

7. Revisions

Once published, data are not usually subject to revision, although subsequent releases may be revised to insert late data or to correct an error.

8. Confidentiality and rounding

To ensure confidentiality of the published accompanying data, figures have been rounded to the nearest 5. If the value is less than 5, it is represented as ‘fewer than 5’ and 0 represents zero reviews, grade challenged or grades changed.

As a result of rounded figures, the percentages (calculated on actual figures) shown in tables may not necessarily add up to 100.

9. Quality assurance

Quality assurance procedures are carried out as explained in the Quality Assurance Framework for Statistical Publications published by Ofqual to ensure the accuracy of the data and to challenge or question it, where necessary. The publication may be deferred if the statistics are not considered fit for purpose.

10. Status

These statistics are classified as Official Statistics.

A number of other statistical releases and publications relate to this one:

For any related publications for qualifications offered in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland please contact the respective regulators – Qualifications Wales, CCEA and the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA).

13. Feedback

We welcome your feedback on our publications. Should you have any comments on this statistical release and how to improve it to meet your needs, please contact us at data.analytics@ofqual.gov.uk.

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