Appeals 2021

Summer 2021 Appeals

In January 2021, it was announced that the summer series examinations would be replaced by Teacher Assessed Grades designed to capture the level at which the student was working.  The Oxford Open Learning Trust has now completed TAGs for those students who asked Oxford Open Learning to grade them and passed these over to the examination boards for external quality assurance.  Our Policy for determining grades can be found here.

Students will be informed of their grades on August 10th for A levels and August  12th for GCSE/International GCSE.  For more information please see the results page.

Appealing results of the Summer 2021 exam series

Special arrangements have been made for appeals in 2021.  Appealing this year is a two-stage process.  Students must complete Stage One before proceeding to Stage Two.

Stage One – Centre Reviews

If you are unhappy with your grade, you should first ask your centre for an administrative check On submitting a Stage One appeal, your grade may go up or down.  During the administrative check, The Centre will confirm:

• that its procedures in allocating a grade have been followed
• that the grade awarded to you by the exam board is the grade they awarded you.

Requests for appeals on the grounds of academic judgement (unreasonableness) will only be considered by awarding organisations (at Stage Two) and not by centres. In these cases, an initial centre review must still be completed to ensure that the centre has not made any procedural or administrative errors. The centre should not review its academic judgements during the centre review stage.

You should contact your entering centre to start this process,  If your entering centre was the Oxford Open Learning Trust,  you should download the Centre Review Form here and send the completed form to appeals@ool.co.uk. Please format your email subject line as below

[Student Name] – [Oxford Open Learning Student Number] – [Appeal Type (Priority or Standard)] – [UCAS number if Priority]

Priority Appeals are only available to A level students where a university place is contingent on the result of the appeal.

The Oxford Open Learning Trust will complete the centre review and provide you with the information to decide whether to proceed to Stage Two.

Stage Two – Appeals to the Awarding Organisation (the Exam Board)

If you are still unhappy with the examination grade, then you can appeal to the examination board on the following grounds:

1. the Centre did not follow its procedure properly or consistently in arriving at the result, or during the centre review;
2. the awarding organisation made an administrative error in relation to the result;
3. the centre made an unreasonable exercise of academic judgement in the choice of evidence from which to determine the grade and/or the determination of that grade from the evidence.

On submitting a Stage Two appeal, your grade may go up or down. Your grade will only be changed if your original grade could not possibly have been awarded using reasonable academic judgement.  For example, if you have been awarded a B and need an A, the exam board moderator will not change your grade, even if they believe the work to be of an A-grade standard if it is reasonable for another tutor to have assessed it as a grade B.

Deadlines for a Stage Two appeal

All requests for an appeal must be made directly to the centre which submitted the grade and must be received by the awarding organisation by:

• 19 August 2021 for priority appeals (for students applying to higher education who did not attain their first choice, i.e. the offer they accepted as their first choice, and wish to appeal an A level or other Level 3 qualification result), or by
• 14 September 2021 for non-priority appeals.

In order to submit a stage two review, you will need to complete the Awarding Organisation Review Form and send it to appeals@ool.co.uk before the above deadlines

Other sources of information

JCQ has published a guide for parents and students which can be found here: JCQ-Guidance-for-Students-and-Parents-on-Summer-2021.pdf

The Department for Education: Student guide to awarding: summer 2021 – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Edexcel has published a guide on how the International GCSE Appeals process will work here: international-appeals-summer-2021.pdf (pearson.com)

Fees

Stage one fees

Stage one involves The Oxford Open Learning Trust checking that no administrative errors have been made and that we have followed procedure.  The trust will not be charging any student for this service.  Please be aware that if we find an administrative error where the grade would go down we are also obliged to inform the Awarding Organisation who will make the appropriate amendment.

Stage two fees

There are no fees for AQA or Edexcel A’ levels and GCSEs as these will be paid by the Department for Education.  The table below shows the fees The Oxford Open Learning Trust is charging for Edexcel International GCSEs.

If your grade is amended upwards, any appeal fees paid to The Oxford Open Learning Trust will be refunded in full.