Embedded Files
GCSE Results Day 2025 will be on Thursday 21 August 2025.
Back in June, Mr Hill sent an email to all parents, detailing how to understand your results slips and the process for remarks. Again, its important to stress that in our past experience, reviews of marking are highly unlikely to result in a change.
Grade Boundaries: AQA
English Literature, RS, Geography, History, PE, DT, Art, Languages. Food, Dance, Music - Includes Paper by Paper on second tab at the bottom
Grade Boundaries: Edexcel Pearson
Maths, Science, Triple Science, Astronomy - includes paper by paper grade boundaries on separate tabs at the bottom
Performing Arts (BTEC Tech Level 2) - on Page 5
Grade Boundaries: OCR
Computer Science - Page 2
Cambridge Nationals Child Development & Creative iMedia - Page 1
Re-marks (Review of Marking):
Sometimes students miss their predicted grades in results and want to explore checking the marking. The exam boards allow this in two ways:
Paying for a re-mark
Appealing after that re-mark
For the re-mark, grades can still go down as well as up and candidates need to declare that they understand this risk. In addition, in our experience, re-marks have very limited chance of succeeding. .
As a school though, we will automatically pay for a remark in Maths and English Language (only Language), if the candidate is 1 mark below a Grade 4 or 5 as these grades for these subjects have an impact on future college and career options. When schools request a re-mark, the candidate's paper is reviewed by a senior examiner, who checks that the original marker applied the mark scheme correctly. THEY DON'T MARK THE PAPER AGAIN. Again though, the likelihood of a grade changing is highly unlikely. Of the grades that have come back changed, the vast majority were only when we spotted a major error from the exam board.
This essentially means that re-marks coming back changed are very unlikely, unless there has been a major issue. An example of a "major" issue from last year was when a student was given 3/80 on an English paper, but achieved 52/80 on their other paper. We challenged this with the exam board and were able to prove that they had not marked the majority of their paper.
Parents and candidates have the right to also pay privately for re-marks. It's worth highlighting that the costs are high:
£43.50 per component (or paper). A component is an individual paper. So, for example, Geography had 3 papers and if a review was wanted, the candidate would need to carefully consider which paper(s) to avoid significant cost.
If a parent / candidate would still like to request a re-mark, the deadline for requesting a re-mark to the school is the 20th September.
Payment, in the form of a cheque, payable to “Heartwood Learning Trust” or cash and permission from the candidate would be needed in advance, before we are able to proceed. The cost is £43.50 per paper wanting to be remarked. The reason why we ask for a cheque or cash, is that if a re-mark is successful and the overall grade changes, then the candidate is not charged. As a result, cheques are not cashed until the outcome of the remark. Due to students having left school we cannot take electronic payments via Parentpay. If you do not have a cheque book, the only alternative is cash. If cash is your only option, then this can be handed in to reception alongside your request.
Importantly, we cannot submit remarks UNTIL WE HAVE RECEIEVED PAYMENT. Unfortunately, this is due to issues we had in 2022 of parents requesting remarks (as in some cases they needed specific grades for college) but then not paying when those remarks were unsuccessful
Having read and understood all of the above, the process to request a remark is to email: m.hudson@mce.hlt.academy (this is Mrs Hudson, our exams officer) with the candidate giving permission and detailing the specific papers they want to be reviewed. Payment can then be brought into school. The envelope should be labelled: FAO Exams Team: Exams Remark - Name of Candidate. The school office is open 9am - 3pm during the holidays and 8:30am to 4:30pm in term time.
Timelines: the exam boards say up to 20 calendar days to give a decision. As a result, this means that the reviews will not come back in time for the start of the college academic year.
Appeals:
The appeals process is available to centres and candidates after receiving the outcome of a review of results (the review of marking stage) Reference should be made to the JCQ publication A guide to the awarding bodies’ appeals processes. This booklet provides full details of the awarding bodies’ appeals processes and the associated timescales. It is available on the JCQ website:
http://www.jcq.org.uk/exams-office/appeals
Appeals can only be submitted after the outcome of a review of results has been reported to the centre been reported to the centre (ie once the outcome of the remark has been received).
Appeals must be made by the candidate in writing and clearly state the grounds for appeal and sent to the head of centre.
We as a centre, then have to send this appeal and not the parent / candidate. Awarding bodies charge a fee for appeals. A stage 1 hearing cost s £114.10 and the following appeal hearing costs £195.10 if you are unhappy with the outcome of the stage 1 hearing.
All of these procedures and policies are set by the exam boards and NOT the school (as we just follow their processes).
Access to Scripts:
Two of the exam boards we use (AQA and Edexcel only) allow candidate's to request a pdf copy of their marked exam paper.
Unfortunately both boards have different reasons to allow access to scripts.
For AQA, requesting a script is for teaching and learning purposes ONLY and not to review the paper to decide if a remark should be made. Specifically they say "If an access to scripts request is made, you cannot then submit a request for a review of marking."
For Edexcel, they say that a pdf copy can be requested by a candidate to then view and decide if a remark is appropriate. Again, re-marks farther than 2 marks away have a very low probability of being changed.
As a result, we would only advise making this request for access to scripts, for Maths and Science only, so as not to jeopardise the possibility of a remark. We would also only advise making this request if you are within 2 marks of a grade boundary in Maths or Science.
If you would like a pdf copy of your scripts, please again, email: m.hudson@mce.hlt.academy (this is Mrs Hudson, our exams officer)
Page updated
Report abuse