Remarks are too expensive and poorer students are disadvantaged

I don't think it is any of your business why my parents had a second child and my local area does not have many schools and this is the closest. Silly 11 year old me forgot to ask my school's remark policy when applying, dammit. -_-

Perhaps the senior examiner gets paid £5 or £10 more?

Go and complain to edexcel. I dont see you as being significantly disadvantaged. i never dreamed of insisting on remarks. I think its cheap.

Did you get that £15 a week? If you're on free school meal, you must have... you could have saved up from that for cases like this
You could've gone to a different school for your A levels as many students do so in this country.

This was simply a thread to discuss the issues. I can complain to Edexcel but I doubt that anything will change, and if it does then it is too late anyway. You don't know me so how can you assess whether I am disadvantaged or not?

Once again when I was 16 I didn't think to ask my school about their remark policy? I'll make a note to tell my brother though, thanks for reminding me!

The £15 goes to my parents for other living costs such as rent and food. My local area has only the school that I am now, not everyone lives in London or a major town.

3 remarks? Just resit the year.

I had 4 remarks for GCSE and all 4 grades went up lol

At GCSE you do 10+ subjects. At A level you do 3, so must have seriously cocked up to think that you'd be better off getting a remark in every subject.

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?

Once again when I was 16 I didn't think to ask my school about their remark policy? I'll make a note to tell my brother though, thanks for reminding me!

The £15 goes to my parents for other living costs such as rent and food. My local area has only the school that I am now, not everyone lives in London or a major town.

Not necessarily. You only get a remark if you barely miss the grade. And let's not forget, these are REMARKS. Not free marks for the sake of bants. It's not their fault that their paper was initially marked unaccurately. If their grades go up, they fully deserved that new grade and didn't cock up at all.

The thing is, if it was free, pretty much everyone would get a remark because why not? Unless you get an A* you might as well give it a go. But the exam boards make so many mistakes now that I think they need to look at the process again. It's not fair for someone to have to pay upfront, even if they get a refund and a mark up, for an exam marker's mistake*

Did you get that £15 a week? If you're on free school meal, you must have... you could have saved up from that for cases like this
You could've gone to a different school for your A levels as many students do so in this country.

Have you got some stats on how many mistakes they make v how many exam papers?

The rule change will eliminate most of your so called mistakes and only change things if there are genuine errors.

Your sort of appeal would fail and rightly so.

Please explain why the appeal would fail?

I don't know how you're setting conditions for my own analogy. Besides, there's no "interpreting" answers in a maths, physics or biology paper. I'm either correct or i wrote down rubbish. If marks are counted wrong or haven't been credited where due, they'll be rectified.

There's no "sort of appeal" here. It's simply a case of being 1 mark off and asking for a remark to see whether or not your marks are accurate.

Besides, an error is what mark edits should be given for in the first place. I haven't seen anyone here claim otherwise. You invented a narrative to argue against lol

I don't have any stats but it's irrelevant for me - if even one person loses a uni place because of a marking error, that's one mistake too many. I actually agree with a lot of stuff you've said above, remarks shouldn't be just because you don't like the grade but it's also very hard to tell isn't it? Like, a straight A student who randomly gets a C - on the surface might seem like a mistake so send it for a remark? But could actually just have been a bad paper. How can you tell what is or isn't an exceptional case? I think it's very difficult and I really disagree with people just remarking or complaining because they didn't get the grade they want but I know so many people who have had D or C grades go up to As or Bs something with the marking system seems wrong. Even if it's a difference in interpretation how can a paper be an A to one person and a C to another, maybe the markers need better training or expertise in the exam papers and if the exam boards have to pay more for that to avoid potentially costing an A level student their future then so be it*