Marking guidelines

Once an exam has taken place the completed exam scripts are sent to a secure scanning company so that they can be scanned and made available to the markers. 

All assessment processes, including marking, and moderation, will be conducted anonymously unless the nature of the assessment makes this impossible.

All marking is completed against a marking scheme explaining how the assessment is scored. These are included in the examiners’ reports, and published after the results are released.  

All assessments will be marked by two markers. Neither will know the identity of the student, nor will they know the marks the other awards. This is known as blind marking. There are occasions when the script will be subject to review. The following guidelines are used to identify those scripts which are to be reviewed: 

• where the first and second mark awarded lie either side of the pass mark
• where the both marks are fails but the average of the two marks is within 2 marks of the pass mark

A review is carried out by the Principal Examiner (or nominee) for the subject and can involve one of the following 

• Full remark of script
• Remark of specific questions
• Review and validation of the marks awarded by the first / second markers

The Principal Examiner (or nominee) will apply their academic judgement during the review process and the mark awarded will be the confirmed mark.

In all other cases the final mark is the average of the marks awarded by the first and second markers.

In all cases where the final mark is not a whole number, the final mark reported to candidates is rounded down to the next lower whole number.

Applications for mitigating circumstances will be processed by the Assessment Team and presented to the mitigating circumstances committee for consideration.  This will be done after the marks are confirmed at the Board of Examiners.

Eight weeks after the examinations the initial results for the CT and CA2 subjects are sent to the Assessment Team for processing. One week later the Board of Examiners meet to discuss the results for these subjects.  At this meeting the pass mark and the final marks are confirmed.  In addition the recommendations of the mitigating circumstances committee  will be considered and agreed.  The Assessment Team then produce the pass lists (for the Principal Examiner to sign off.  In the meantime the Principal Examiner will be drafting the examiners’ report for publication on the website soon after the results are published.  Eleven weeks after the examinations have been sat the results are released. 

For the later subjects (CA1, CP3 and the ST and SA subjects) these activities all take place two weeks later.  

Managing the examinations is a very complex process and requires a strict adherence to the deadlines to ensure that we publish the results at the earliest opportunity.

Examination timetable