The SQA operate a Post-Results Service where a centre has concerns about a candidate’s certificated grade, if that grade has been determined via external assessment (ie marking undertaken by SQA).
Centres can request a clerical check (except for exams that were scanned and marked electronically) or a marking review of the candidate materials that were submitted to SQA for marking if they believe an error has occurred with either the marking or totalling of marks.
A priority marking review (PMR) is the same as a marking review, but will be considered and resulted earlier. Priority marking reviews are only for candidates with a current conditional university/college offer.
Criteria for centres to submit a marking review are provided by the Association of Directors of Education Scotland below:
- Schools will submit Post Result Services requests to SQA where it holds clear and compelling evidence that there is a reasonable possibility that an error may have occurred with the marking or totalling of marks in a pupil’s examination script. That is, the pupil’s final grade is markedly at odds with the totality of assessment evidence gathered during the course and out of line with the performance of other pupils with similar profiles.
- It is not sufficient for a pupil’s final grade to be below the grade anticipated by any estimate submitted to SQA or that achieved in a mock examination. The clear expectation is that there will be compelling evidence from all aspects of assessment carried out by the school including class tests, Unit tests, coursework and estimate exams.
Post Result Services should not be requested where:
- The pupil’s final grade is in line with the estimate submitted to SQA and the expectation of the school based on performance throughout the course.
- The final award is within the same grade as that predicted by the assessment evidence held by the school. [Example: School Estimate Grade B, band 3. Pupil achieves Grade B, band 4].
- The pupil’s performance has shown inconsistencies during the year such that the final award falls within the range of performance evidenced.
- The pupil’s original estimate is found to be overly optimistic in the light of the actual performance of the class cohort in the examination. In other words, the majority of the cohort have also performed less well than the grade predicted by their estimate exam.
In addition, the SQA point out that they review pupils’ exam papers where marks are close to grade boundaries, i.e. a pupil’s exam result of 69% where grade boundary for an ‘A’ is 70%, as a double check that they have been awarded the correct grade.
This year, August 2017, the deadline for Priority Marking Reviews to be submitted was recently announced as falling within the local authority’s school summer holidays.
We have discussed this in school and have agreed to process the priority marking reviews as follows:
If you wish to request a priority marking review, please call the school office on results day, Tuesday 8 August 2017 or Wednesday 9 August 2017 between 9:00AM and 3:00PM. You will then be required to submit the following information before a review can be requested:
- Subject and Level;
- Name of university the result should be sent to;
- Contact name at the university;
- E-mail address of the contact person or university to whom the result should be sent.
Please note that reviewed results can go down as well as go up and that this could have undesirable consequences on any offers you may have for other universities.
If you do not have a current conditional university/college offer but wish to discuss a normal marking review, you should wait until the school resumes on Monday 21 August 2017 before speaking to your teacher and/or Principal Teacher for the faculty.