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Post result information

Okay, well every year when exam results hit there are countless threads which ask about re-sits, re-marks, declining grades and so forth. This thread is intended to provide all the info you need to know, in one place! Even though now it is slightly late to post this thread, hopefully it’ll be useful for next year’s lot.
*Note- the prices and dates stated are for guidance purposes only. Most, if not all, of the dates are earlier than the final deadlines, by a few days - better to be safe than sorry :smile:

This is because exam officers have a load of stuff to process and send off. Giving in your request(s) on the last day isn't exactly the best move to make!*

Edit: Also technology is moving forward at a fast pace (faster than I can update :p:

), which means centres are now able to do quite a few things online. So information provided in this thread is, again, for guidance purposes only. If you are unsure, the best person to ask is your exam officer :smile:

Results day
A-level results are always on Thursdays (including GCSE ones)
Jan 2006 session = 16th March
June 2006 session = 17th August
So the 2007 results days will be in the same week, the date will not be the same, but it will be on a Thursday!

Missing/incomplete results
For X, # or Q you must bring your results statement to your exam officer, if they are not valid in your case.
X = no result
# = absent for the exam
Q = unit(s) incomplete

Remarks
- Priority remark:
This is for students whose further education place depends on the re-mark outcome. You will need to provide your UCAS number otherwise the exam boards will deny the request. The deadline is 7 days after results day, or 7 days after receiving a photocopy of your script. A priority remark costs £50 per unit and the re-mark is usually completed in a week.

- Standard remark:
This is for all students, the deadline is 15th September and the cost is £40 per unit. My remark only took 2 weeks (this was with Edexcel).

Re-marks can cause the final mark to go up OR down, if the grade changes you will be given a refund. The purpose of a remark is if you got a much lower grade than expected, not for getting that extra one mark! There’s not much point of getting a re-mark for AS if you are out to get that one mark for the next grade (but there is point for A2), as it will contribute little to your overall A2 grade. One mark will be worth half a mark towards your A-level, effectively. You might as well re-sit and get high scoring unit grades which will help you out more as the A2 modules are harder. If you were close to the next grade teachers will take account of that (as well as re-sits) when predicting, so don’t worry. Remember, A2 predictions are one of the most important pieces of info in your University application.

I suppose there is a point of remarking to get the few marks for the next grade, but only for ‘show’ purposes (although this maybe deemed as cheating the system). I advise you only to do this under certain conditions. High grades- let’s say if you got AAB for AS, you were 2 marks away from getting an A. You are applying for university, and most importantly, you are not declining. You might as well remark, especially if it’s an essay orientated subject. Due to cashing-in, universities will see that you got AAA (if re-mark is successful), which looks much better. However, remember this is not doing any good in terms of contribution to the overall A2 award, but I suppose you could still re-sit… Remember, for AS, only do this if 1) You got high grades, 2) Not far from the boundary, and most importantly 3) You’re not declining. For A2 if you were close to the boundary I think it’s worth a re-mark, particularly if your university place depends upon it.
*Some may think that re-marking for the wrong reason is cheating, but what I’m doing is simply providing all the options so that you can evaluate for your self.

Clerical re-check
This checks that all pages have been marked and that all the marks have been added up properly. This costs £15 per unit and the deadline is 15th September. Personally I think this is nonsense, you might as well request a copy of your script for the same price, also it will prove useful.

Access of script
A photocopy of a script/unit paper(s) costs £15 and the deadline is 24th August. For original script the deadline is 20th September. You may want to do this before ordering a re-mark because some subjects have VERY picky mark schemes. You might have thought you had done well- your answers maybe 100% correct, but unless you’ve hit the correct aspects in the mark scheme, what you’ve written down may not be very meaningful. So acknowledge this before proceeding with a remark. Also this gives you the opportunity to find out where you went wrong, or what skill(s) you’re lacking etc.

Declining grades
Declining is free before the 15th September, or within 2 weeks after an EAR (enquiry about results) outcome. After that there is a £30-£45 charge per subject, although exam boards my request a written explanation for the decline.

*edit: new certification/declining rules are being introduced for the 2008 Jan exam session. Read the next post for details*

When you get your AS results you will have the option of declining the grades, although some schools do it automatically- i.e. they tend to get bad results. Declining a grade means that you are ‘rejecting’ the award (i.e. AS, A2), therefore you won’t get a certificate for it. Instead the results, which remain in the ‘bank’, will count towards your A2 award (out of 600 UMS marks for A-level). This procedure means that universities will not receive your results when applying after you get your AS’s. This is not a bad thing, in the way that universities will not discriminate against candidates who have declined and those who haven’t. If you got something like AAAA, then it’s a bad thing to decline because you want universities to see that you have achieved this. They will have more to go on rather than just A2 predictions. It is bad to decline some and not others as it gives the impression that you have something to hide. If you’ve declined, then on the UCAS online application you must put the ‘A-level’ grade as ‘pending’.

*The most important thing to remember is if you want to improve your A2 certification you MUST decline the A2 grade. This only applies with A2. It’s not like GCSE where you can re-sit after you get certificated (then get an updated certificate). If you do not decline you will have to re-sit all the A-level units again!

Re-sits
Your BEST mark will always be used. The ‘general’ cost of a re-sit is £20 per unit; although entering as a private candidate may cost more (you need to know your UCI number). The deadline for January re-sits is 30th September. After that it will cost £35 per unit until the end of November. After that it will be £50 per unit. Note that A-level exam sessions in November no longer exist.

Re-sitting is very useful, plus universities won’t know, unless you take more than 2 years to complete an A-level - that’s what top universities/med schools don’t like. If you’re aiming for A’s, you might as well re-sit the AS units where you got borderline A’s, or similar. AS’s are easier than A2’s and they are worth just as much, so why on earth not re-sit to make your life easier? I got 81/100 in C1 Maths. I re-sat and got 91/100, if hadn’t done this I would have missed out on my A in Maths (that’s how much of a jammy dodger I am!). Re-sits also force you to prepare for the synoptic unit, so that is useful in another way. I’ve heard that some schools force all students to re-sit, probably for the reason above.

Inter-exam board timetable
Perhaps you want to re-sit in January but you school doesn’t allow it - enter as a private candidate (Edexcel guide).

Exact fees for post-result services can be found on AQA's website. Although it is for AQA, the prices across the examboard are likely to be more or less the same.

----

P.s. If anyone would like to post any useful stuff, I’ll put a link on this post to the relevant post in this thread. Yes, I am a bit bored! :p:

M-M

Reply 1

Mustard-man

OP

18

Notice to Centres Reminder of change to the GCE, Applied GCE and GNVQ
certification and decline rules January 2008 and Subsequent Examinations

1. In order to reduce the bureaucratic burden placed upon centres, a change to the ‘Entry, Aggregation and Certification Rules’ for GCE, Applied GCE and GNVQ will come into effect after the completion of the June 2007 examination series.

2. The significance of this change is that, from the January 2008 examination series, a candidate who wishes to re-use unit scores in an effort to improve a grade is no longer required, nor will be able, to decline the original award. This means that, after certification, candidates will not have to retake the whole qualification to improve performance but may do so through re-sitting individual units.

3. Candidates will simply have to make an entry for at least one of the contributing units for the award and make an entry for certification (cash-in). The unit scores that contributed to the original award will then be taken into consideration when the subsequent award is calculated. The new aggregation will be based upon the best available score for each contributing unit.

4. This change renders the facility to decline grades redundant and it will be removed from GCE, Applied GCE and GNVQ after 20 September 2007.

5. For the June 2007 examination series, centres will still be able to request the decline of a published grade up to 20 September 2007. However, any grade that has not been declined by this deadline will be published on a certificate and it will not be possible to change this subsequently. Candidates who do not decline will not be penalised as they will be able to make use of the new facility in the January 2008 series.

6. Because the original grade awarded will remain on the student’s record, an awarding body will no longer require the return of the original certificate. Subsequent awards will simply be added to that record and associated with the examination series in which the certification has been requested.

Note: Unit scores that have been used to count towards a previous award cannot be re-used, at the same level, for an award in a specification with a different subject title. For example, a student who uses unit scores for an award in AS Biology cannot re-use those scores when claiming AS Biology (Human), although the unit scores can be re-used when claiming either A level Biology or A level Biology (Human). Further examples of the way in which this simplification of regulations will affect particular subjects (for example, English Literature and Mathematics) are given in ‘Entry, Aggregation and Certification Procedures and Rules’, will be available on the JCQ website in September.

JCQ April 2007

Reply 2

jonjoe

2

thanks

Reply 3

Epitomessence

12

Wow. Thanks so much! :biggrin:

Reply 4

A Y A Z

11

Nice one, Mustard! :wink:

Reply 5

7589200

18

Thx!

Reply 6

Juncture

16

In case anyone's interested our school told us the other day that the results day for January modules is the 8th March (which doesn't fit with the information above cause that would suggest it's the 15th) However school might be wrong for all I know

Reply 7

Mustard-man

OP

18

Juncture

In case anyone's interested our school told us the other day that the results day for January modules is the 8th March (which doesn't fit with the information above cause that would suggest it's the 15th) However school might be wrong for all I know

8th March IS NOT the official results day. Centres which have some kind of online account are able to get the results early. Not all centres are able to do this.

The official results day is 15th :smile:

Reply 8

jerusha

hi,

is there any way i can access the exact marks i acheived? as in numbers instead of grades? apparently, CIE doesn't release them- true?

Reply 9

Mustard-man

OP

18

No idea about CIE. Ask your exam officer about it.

Reply 10

Mustard-man

OP

18

Exam time....

Reply 11

cowsgomoo

13

this was very helpful, especially remarking information :smile:

Reply 12

Rosie151

2

ok. One of my offers is AAAB. If I get AAAB, I expect my B to be fairly close (less than 10 - 20 UMS marks away) to an A. I would really like to resit a module just to push it up that extra few marks to an A because I think AAAA looks so much better.

Can I accept my offer and go to uni, but decline the B, to do a resit of a module next jan or june, just to gain a few extra UMS marks?

The problem is that if I decline my B, I technically only have AAA, and have failed to meet the offer. However, unofficially, the university would know that even if I failed the resits, I would have a minimum B grade in my fourth subject, thus guaranteeing that I would make the offer. So...if you get what I mean, my UMS marks would show that I had made the offer, but I would not have the certification to show that I had met it.

Hope someone understands this and can tell me if this is allowed!

Reply 13

calcium878

18

I'd ring the uni and ask them their stance on this. I can't see them being too picky about someone wanting to boost qualifications, but the problem might be with UCAS' databases etc...

Reply 14

Mustard-man

OP

18

Rosie151

ok. One of my offers is AAAB. If I get AAAB, I expect my B to be fairly close (less than 10 - 20 UMS marks away) to an A. I would really like to resit a module just to push it up that extra few marks to an A because I think AAAA looks so much better.

Can I accept my offer and go to uni, but decline the B, to do a resit of a module next jan or june, just to gain a few extra UMS marks?

The problem is that if I decline my B, I technically only have AAA, and have failed to meet the offer. However, unofficially, the university would know that even if I failed the resits, I would have a minimum B grade in my fourth subject, thus guaranteeing that I would make the offer. So...if you get what I mean, my UMS marks would show that I had made the offer, but I would not have the certification to show that I had met it.

Hope someone understands this and can tell me if this is allowed!

Yeah, I get what you mean; declining it would technically mean you've voided the conditions of the offer, even though you met them on results day.

The only way universities would know if you declined that grade is they specifically check with the examboard, or if they require a copy of your certificates (which are issued some time in Novemeber). Universities actually get the results 3 or 4 days early from the examboard, then they pass their decisions onto UCAS to be shown on results day.

I would ask the university about this. I think as long as you meet the conditions on results day (that's really what it's about) it wouldn't really matter if you declined a grade to improve it. But yeah, do check up on this :smile:

Also, just a little note, I think the examboards are changing the rules of certification in 2008. One of which you won't have to decline to resit. I'll check up on this and update the thread if there is any news (AQA seem to mention it on a pdf file, but I can't access it).

Edit: from JCQ:

JCQ

The significance of this change is that, from the January 2008 examination series, a candidate who wishes to re-use unit scores in an effort to improve a grade is no longer required, nor will be able, to decline the original award. This means that, after certification, candidates will not have to retake the whole qualification to improve performance but may do so through re-sitting individual units.

Reply 15

schrodinger's cat

13

Rosie151

ok. One of my offers is AAAB. If I get AAAB, I expect my B to be fairly close (less than 10 - 20 UMS marks away) to an A. I would really like to resit a module just to push it up that extra few marks to an A because I think AAAA looks so much better.

I would follow what the other people have said - but wait until results day; you never know what could happen, especially if you think you were only a few marks off an A.

Reply 16

Rosie151

2

ok. great advice. thanks!

Reply 17

Cristiano12

I have a question regarding declining your grade and how it changes in Jan 2008.

When i decline the grade, it means that the whole grade is declined, so does this mean that I have lost all my points for a particular subject if i decline it, including my coursework marks. And will i be able to reuse particular unit grades with improved resit grades from a subject that I have declined?

Say if I have achieved this on Subject A:

Unit 1= 70/90
Unit 2= 20/90
Unit 3= 43/120

= GRADE D

If I decline the grade, will i still be able to carry forward unit 1's grade and simply resit unit 2 and 3, and improve upon these marks, and even if I fail to improve to these marks, I am still able to used the 20 marks in unit 1 and 43 marks in unit 3 at the end of the day or will these units have to be totally redone?

Also, how does this vary with the new Jan 08 decline rule?

Sorry for the confusion, I just don't quite get this matter.

Reply 18

Mustard-man

OP

18

Cristiano12

I have a question regarding declining your grade and how it changes in Jan 2008.

When i decline the grade, it means that the whole grade is declined, so does this mean that I have lost all my points for a particular subject if i decline it, including my coursework marks. And will i be able to reuse particular unit grades with improved resit grades from a subject that I have declined?

No, your points won't be all lost. If you decline, you can just resit the units you did bad in and the rest of the unit marks will be carried forward, automatically. Your best mark will always count. If you don't decline, you'll have to take all 6 A-level units from scratch. You need to use the same UCI number, that's basically your 'A-level bank', it contains all your marks and stuff.

Cristiano12