GCSE Appeals Process 2021

THE EXTERNAL APPEAL PROCESS - QUESTIONING YOUR GCSE GRADES

Please note – any student appealing must bear in mind this truth: When you appeal, you take the risk that your grade can go down. You have to be very confident that it could not go down before appealing – this is particularly true when appealing at Stage 2. This document may help you decide.

STAGE 1 CENTRE REVIEW APPEALS

1. The student/parent/carer discusses the issue on Results’ Day with staff.
2. If the student/ parent/ carer would like reassurance that the school has followed all its procedural and administrative responsibilities, then the student appeals for ‘A Centre Review’. Examples of procedural issues may be that mitigating circumstances at the time of an assessment were not taken into account or access arrangements/reasonable adjustments for an assessment were not taken into account. We will advise you on Results’ Day.
3. During the Centre Review, we will check that no administrative or procedural error has been made with regard to the results, but we are not allowed to review the academic judgements made.
4. Please note - even where the school agrees that there has been a procedural failure or administrative error, it may not impact on the grade; as the Government has directed, ‘the centre needs to decide whether this affected the grade submitted to the awarding organisation’.
5. Centre Review Appeals do not look at academic judgement – that is in Stage 2 below, but you have to go through Stage 1 to get to Stage 2.

To proceed with a Stage 1 Appeal please download the Stage One Appeals Form. SECTION ONE ONLY should be filled in electronically and then the whole form should be sent by email to: appeals@tggsacademy.org. You can find a list of relevant Exam Boards HERE.

This must be done by 9:00 a.m. on Monday, 30th August.

We will then review your appeal and respond no later than 4:00 p.m. on Wednesday, 8th September. The response will be added to your submitted appeals form (in section two of the document) and returned to you via email. You can then decide whether to proceed with a Stage 2 Exam Board Appeal. If you decide to proceed you must submit the form by 4:00 p.m. on Friday, 10th September (see below).

STAGE 2 EXAM BOARD APPEAL.

Three points to understand: -

1. Regardless of the result of Stage 1 Centre Review, all students have the right to submit an appeal to the awarding organisation as the next stage in the process.
2. Stage 2 can only happen if Stage 1 Centre Review has happened first.
3. A corrected grade could be higher or lower than the grade you were given on results day.

To proceed with a Stage 2 Exam Board appeal you must complete the Stage Two Appeals form. The link to this form will be sent with our Stage One response letter.  This  must be sent to appeals@tggsacademy.org no later than 4:00 p.m. on Friday, 10th September.

The school will then send the relevant paperwork to the exam board with the student’s Stage 2 appeal by 17^th September. Once we have submitted the appeal to the awarding organisation, we will confirm to the student that we have done so via school e-mail.

Reasons for Stage 2 Appeal: These are the basis for an appeal: -

1. There was an error in the way the school followed or applied its procedure for determining your teacher assessed grade and the student feels that this still needs addressing.
2. The school did not make a reasonable judgement when deciding which evidence to use to determine your teacher assessed grade. 

The Government have said this about selection of evidence: ‘Where there is a starting point that the same evidence will be used for all students in a cohort, the relevant question will usually be whether an academic decision to depart from, or not to depart from, the starting point in respect of the particular student was unreasonable. The teacher’s exercise of judgement will not be considered unreasonable simply because an alternative exercise of judgement would have resulted in a more or less favourable result for the individual student.’

1. The school did not make a reasonable exercise of academic judgement based on the evidence gathered.

How is an ‘unreasonable exercise of academic judgement’ defined? This is how the Government have defined it: ‘The independent reviewer will consider whether the original Teacher Assessed Grade decision was reasonable. The independent reviewer will not consider whether they would have given an alternative grade or whether an alternative grade could also reasonably have been given. The reviewer will only conclude that there has been an unreasonable exercise of academic judgement if the Teacher Assessed Grade was clearly wrong – i.e. there was no basis upon which the grade could properly have been given.’

For information on what to do if your Stage 2 appeal is unsuccessful, please refer to the letter from Mr Gregory sent by email on Friday, 2nd July. CLICK HERE for our Centre Policy on Teacher Assessed Grades in 2021.