Remarks are too expensive and poorer students are disadvantaged

With results day coming up, I am worried that once again I cannot ask for a remark due to exam boards such as Edexcel charging £38.60 for a remark and £10.30 for a clerical check.

For GCSE and AS levels I have been unable to get a remark, despite being close to a boundary and knowing I had done better. I know you get the money back if the mark changes but it is still a risk, and I personally find it very hard to ask my parents who do not earn very much at all, for almost £40 and not being able to assure them that they will have it back.

And since for A2 my university place depends on my results, I'd have to pay £48 to get my results back quicker.

I just find it ridiculous that it should cost so much and for some exams the remark itself is more expensive than the original entry itself.

My school makes it extremely difficult to have them pay for a remark and it highly depends on whether the teachers even like you and even then they would probably allow only one remark.

Has anyone else ever had this issue?

Those two statements contradict each other.

With results day coming up, I am worried that once again I cannot ask for a remark due to exam boards such as Edexcel charging £38.60 for a remark and £10.30 for a clerical check.

For GCSE and AS levels I have been unable to get a remark, despite being close to a boundary and knowing I had done better. I know you get the money back if the mark changes but it is still a risk, and I personally find it very hard to ask my parents who do not earn very much at all, for almost £40 and not being able to assure them that they will have it back.

And since for A2 my university place depends on my results, I'd have to pay £48 to get my results back quicker.

I just find it ridiculous that it should cost so much and for some exams the remark itself is more expensive than the original entry itself.

My school makes it extremely difficult to have them pay for a remark and it highly depends on whether the teachers even like you and even then they would probably allow only one remark.

Has anyone else ever had this issue?

Those two statements contradict each other.

With results day coming up, I am worried that once again I cannot ask for a remark due to exam boards such as Edexcel charging £38.60 for a remark and £10.30 for a clerical check.

For GCSE and AS levels I have been unable to get a remark, despite being close to a boundary and knowing I had done better. I know you get the money back if the mark changes but it is still a risk, and I personally find it very hard to ask my parents who do not earn very much at all, for almost £40 and not being able to assure them that they will have it back.

And since for A2 my university place depends on my results, I'd have to pay £48 to get my results back quicker.

I just find it ridiculous that it should cost so much and for some exams the remark itself is more expensive than the original entry itself.

My school makes it extremely difficult to have them pay for a remark and it highly depends on whether the teachers even like you and even then they would probably allow only one remark.

Has anyone else ever had this issue?

But dude (or dudette), can you appreciate that if re-marks were cheaper, everyone would do them all the time?

In the real world that is cheap.

You arent disadvantaged. You had 2 years to save up the money which you could have put aside as a contingency fund. A part time job could easily have covered that.

I thought they changed the remark rules anyway so that you only get an upgrade if no reasonable examiner would have given you the mark in your original paper?

If you back yourself enough, then ask your parents and if you are proven wrong, then get a job and pay them back over the summer.

Yes of course but if there are two people who both have 79% and are 1 mark away from an A grade they both require, and one can easily risk losing £48 and the other can't, I find this unfair.

Exam boards should charge a fair price because I highly doubt it costs £38 (non priority) since some A2 exams themselves cost about £30, and the latter includes marking, postage, writing the paper and plenty of other things.if re0

If it is cheaper some state schools on tight budgets are more likely to send papers to be remarked and even if they don't, it allows more students who want a remark, to get one.

Not everyone can get a part time job, I already have a lot of work to do at home to makeup for my school's failure to teach me properly as well as babysitting my brother so my parents can go to work since we can't get a babysitter. Not everyone can get a job just like that.

Yeah I saw that they've changed the rules and I disagree with the new method. I think the examiner remarking the paper should not be told the original mark in the first place to avoid bias.

And again I cannot work during the summer due to having a lot of household chores and babysitting to do. And if I were to need 3 remarks I just can't ask my parents for £150 like that. It's not easy to do that.

What I'm saying is that if re-marks were say - £10, then there would be no disincentive to just about everyone who didn't get what they wanted to pay for re-marks on everything. There would be hundreds of thousands of re-marks and the process would take even longer.

I remember hearing how a guy got an A in English A level and then asked for a re-mark and then got a U.
Sometimes a re-mark just isn't worth it I guess

Not everyone can get a part time job, I already have a lot of work to do at home to makeup for my school's failure to teach me properly as well as babysitting my brother so my parents can go to work since we can't get a babysitter. Not everyone can get a job just like that.

Yeah I saw that they've changed the rules and I disagree with the new method. I think the examiner remarking the paper should not be told the original mark in the first place to avoid bias.

And again I cannot work during the summer due to having a lot of household chores and babysitting to do. And if I were to need 3 remarks I just can't ask my parents for £150 like that. It's not easy to do that.

3 remarks? Just resit the year.

Yeah I understand but that's just how it is. I find it not fair that poorer students cannot get a remark if they're just as close to the next grade as a more well off person. Perhaps schools should be given a budget to cover costs such as these. State schools and sixth forms cover exam entry fees and I feel they should have a pot of money for remark fees. My school has made it so difficult in the past and that has meant I wasn't able to get a remark.

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A friend of mine got 6 of her A grade GCSEs remarked and all 6 turned it to A*s so there's that also.

Yeah I understand but that's just how it is. I find it not fair that poorer students cannot get a remark if they're just as close to the next grade as a more well off person. Perhaps schools should be given a budget to cover costs such as these. State schools and sixth forms cover exam entry fees and I feel they should have a pot of money for remark fees. My school has made it so difficult in the past and that has meant I wasn't able to get a remark.

You have two years to save up that money.
Its not the exam boards fault if the school you attend is a poor one.
Remarks should only be used in exceptional circumstances, they arent a second bite at the cherry. They were getting out of control and just another cause of grade inflation by pupils seeking to get a further advantage. If it was only 10p per remark then everyone would ask for one.

There were 90,000 remarks last year a rise of 17% in one year.

The smartest way to avoid remarks is just to work hard and get the grades in the first place.

There is a disincentive to requesting remarks on everything - the simple fact that it could just as easily bring the grade down rather than up.

Silly suggestion. I had 11 exams this year for A2 so 3 exams does not seem that large of a number.