Guidance

What people working in schools and colleges need to know about the period after exams and assessments

Published 7 September 2026

Applies to England

What this guide covers for schools and colleges preparing for 2027 exams and assessments

This guide is aimed at people working in schools and colleges who are supporting students through their qualifications, especially exams officers and senior leaders with responsibility for exams. It explains things to be aware of regarding the period after exams and assessments, what you should tell your students and what you can expect from awarding organisations regulated by Ofqual.

Topics include:

• marking
• grading
• results days
• reviews and appeals
• resits

We use the term schools and colleges to refer to schools, colleges and other exam or assessment centres. In this guide “you” refers to a school or college offering qualifications regulated by Ofqual. “We” refers to Ofqual.

This guide covers qualifications typically taken in schools or colleges, and reported in the Department for Education’s performance tables. These include GCSEs, AS and A Levels, T Levels and vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs). We make it clear when information only applies to a specific qualification or type of qualification.

This guide does not cover on-demand assessments such as Functional Skills Qualifications, English for Speakers of Other Languages, apprenticeship assessments, end-point assessments and other VTQs not included in the Department for Education’s performance tables. 

Read this guide alongside any relevant awarding organisation or Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) guidance. For qualification specific queries, you should speak to the relevant awarding organisation.

This is one of a series of guides explaining the arrangements for qualifications in 2027. The others are:

• What people working in schools and colleges need to know before exams and assessments
• What people working in schools and colleges need to know about the exam and assessment season

How does GCSE, AS and A Level exam marking and grading work?

Information about how marking and grading works for GCSE, AS and A Levels can be found in Ofqual’s Understanding grading toolkit for schools and colleges, in particular our teachers’ and headteachers’ guide and our What you need to know page.

What you should do

• Read our understanding grading toolkit for more information on how marking and grading works.
• Use our teacher resources to help you explain the processes to students, either in class or in assembly or information sessions.

What to tell your students

• It is no more difficult to achieve a grade in a subject from one year to the next, nor between different exam boards.
• The quality of students’ work determines the grade they get, and they won’t be disadvantaged by which year they are taking their exams.
• There are no quotas or caps for the number of students who can get a certain grade. The standard of work required to get a particular grade remains consistent each year.

Grading arrangements for VTQs and T Levels in the academic year 2026 to 2027

No significant changes are expected to grading arrangements for existing VTQs and awarding organisations will use suitable grading approaches for their qualifications.  

Where qualifications are new, and in the first years of their awards, we ask awarding organisations to consider that teachers and students may be less familiar with new assessments when setting grade boundaries. 

This will be the case for some T Levels, and new Alternative Academic Qualifications.

How is non-exam assessment (coursework) marked and moderated?

Who marks students’ work?

Non-exam assessment is coursework, practical work or another form of assessment, such as a performance or portfolio, that counts towards a student’s final grade but is not a written exam. It may be marked by teachers, visiting examiners, or the awarding organisation itself, depending on the qualification.

Ofqual requires awarding organisations to make sure all assessors, including any teachers marking their own students’ work, understand how they must mark, and that marking is done accurately and to a consistent standard.

What you should do

• Make sure any internal marking of students’ work is standardised.
• Follow the JCQ instructions for non-exam assessments for GCSEs, AS and A Levels, or instructions set by your awarding organisation when conducting and marking non-exam assessments.
• For vocational and technical qualifications, you should follow the relevant JCQ instructions for non-exam assessments for VTQs.

Student requests for a review of teacher-marked non-exam assessment

Schools and colleges must have an appeals procedure covering internal assessment decisions, including your marking of non-exam assessments. As part of the process, for AS and A Levels, GCSEs and Project qualifications, you must tell students their teacher-marked non-exam assessment marks. Do this in time for any student that wants to request a review to be able to do so before the marks are submitted to the awarding organisation.

JCQ has published information on what you need to do. This also covers what to do for other qualifications. For some qualifications, schools and colleges should speak to the relevant awarding organisation.

What you should do

• Have arrangements in place for students to highlight concerns over internal marking.
• Give students their teacher-marked non-exam assessment marks.
• Follow awarding organisations’ appeals processes.

What to tell your students

• Tell your students they can request a review of their non-exam assessment marks.

What is moderation and verification of marking?

Moderation is the process by which an awarding organisation checks a sample of a school’s or college’s marking of non-exam assessment, to ensure it is accurate and consistent. This is normally done by taking a sample of the marking from each school or college. For GCSE, AS and A Levels this process is known as moderation, for other qualifications it might be known as a check or standards verification. 

To make this possible, schools and colleges provide a sample of their students’ work to the awarding organisation. The sample is set by the awarding organisations to include a sufficient amount and range of student work (given different marks). This allows them to make a secure judgement about the standard of the school’s or college’s marking. 

The awarding organisation reviews the marking of the work in the sample to check the mark scheme has been applied accurately (to the correct standard) and consistently.

If the awarding organisation agrees with the marks, then the school’s or college’s marks remain, and they are used to calculate the final qualification grades. 

Small differences in judgement between a school’s or college’s marker and the awarding organisation are normal and expected. To reflect this, awarding organisations normally choose to put in place a small ‘tolerance’. If an awarding organisation finds the difference between marks awarded by the school or college and those of the awarding organisation to be greater than the tolerance, they will judge the marking to be inaccurate. 

Awarding organisations must act if they:

• find marking is inaccurate
• find marking is inconsistent (for example, some marks are accurate and others are not)
• cannot make a judgement about accuracy or consistency from the sample they have reviewed

They may look at a wider sample of work from that school or college to make a judgement. So it’s important to keep students’ work safe and secure in case it is needed for further scrutiny.

If awarding organisations identify that the marking is inaccurate but consistent – for example, the marks are consistently too low or too high – they will adjust the original marking to make sure students receive an accurate mark. Such an adjustment is applied to the work of all students taking the subject in that school or college, not just those in the sample.

If awarding organisations find the marking is inconsistent, making it impossible to adjust the marks in a way that ensures students receive accurate marks, they will either: 

• request and then re-mark all the work from the school or college
• ask the school or college to mark it again and then look again at the new marks given

The awarding organisation will prepare a report for the school or college, which gives feedback on the marking. This report should allow you to understand the reasons for any changes to your marking made following moderation. This could help you identify any areas for improvement. It will also help you decide whether or not to seek a review of any adjustment to the marks.

What you should do

• Provide the required samples of students’ work to the relevant awarding organisations.
• Follow any requests to submit more work to be checked or marked by the awarding organisation or to re-mark work internally. Where appropriate, decide whether to seek a review of any adjustment to marks.
• Identify areas for improvement in internal marking, if necessary.

When schools and colleges receive exam results data

Schools and colleges usually receive GCSE, AS, A Level and T Level results the day before the public results day, and VTQ results are released on a similar timescale by most awarding organisations. This is to allow you time to prepare the results for students to collect.

Results must remain strictly confidential until release on results day. Awarding organisations will consider a breach of their embargo to be maladministration or malpractice. 

Awarding organisations will release results data for level 1/2, level 2 and level 3 VTQs to schools and colleges before results days to give sufficient time for exams officers to check and prepare the results for final release. For level 3, you will usually get results by the Monday of results week. 

AQA and WJEC process and issue their VTQ results in a similar way to their GCSEs, AS and A Levels and will issue results to schools and colleges the day before results day.

Staff being able to review results and, if necessary, engage with awarding organisations before results days is critical to delivering results accurately and on time. If your school or college handles high volumes of results, consider which staff will need to be available to process them, identify any issues and liaise with the awarding organisation. 

Some awarding organisations issue results to schools and colleges under embargo. You must follow the instructions provided by the awarding organisation or JCQ, including who in your school or college is allowed to view the results early. 

Many schools and colleges opt to release VTQ results to students on the same day as A Level results.  

Ofqual’s VTQ Information Hub brings together dates and deadlines from the awarding organisations, including when results will be available in schools and colleges.  

What you should do

• Prepare results for release to students.
• Keep results strictly confidential until they are due to be released.
• Follow any embargos or instructions about who can see results before they are released.
• Consider whether you want students to receive VTQ results on the same days as GCSE, AS and A Level results.
• Think about how many staff you will need to handle the volume of results you will be receiving and who they should be.

Results days for students

The date exam and assessment results are released depends on the qualification, the way it has been assessed, and the awarding organisation. Results will be made available to students on the dates below after 8am.

Results for AS, A Levels and T Levels taken in summer 2027 will be released to students on Thursday 12 August 2027.

Level 3 VTQs used for progression to higher education will be released to students on or before Thursday 12 August 2027. 

Results for GCSEs taken in summer 2027 will be released to students on Thursday 19 August 2027. 

Level 1/2 and level 2 VTQs results used for progression to further education will be released to students on or before Thursday 19 August 2027. 

Some VTQs are taken on demand or have their results issued on a rolling basis. Results for these will therefore be available at different times throughout the year. You can find the date you will receive your students’ results on the relevant awarding organisation website and on our VTQ Information Hub.

Maths or English language GCSE can be retaken in November. Results for GCSEs taken in November 2026 will be released to students on Thursday 14 January 2027.

From August 2026 onwards, students have the option to get their GCSE and level 1/2 and 2 VTQ results on the DfE’s Education Record app. The app’s purpose is to give students a permanent, verified record of their results, not a means of them finding out their results. For this reason, results will be made available on the app from 11am onwards, a few hours later than students can otherwise receive them. You can find more information on the Education Record app on the DfE website.

What you should do

• Check you know when you will receive results, and when you can release them to students.
• Find out if your school or college is planning to use the Education Record app to give students a record of their results.

What to tell your students

• Make sure your students know when they are due to receive their results and how they can get them.
• Tell your students about the Education Record app, if your school is using it.

How to request reviews and make appeals after results are issued

If you think there has been a marking error, or an awarding organisation hasn’t followed its processes properly, there are ways you can have these decisions reviewed. These are known as post-results services.

Read this separate guidance on reviews of marking or moderation and how to request them for more information.

It is important to remember that a new grade could be higher or lower. 

What you should do

• Have arrangements in place for students to request reviews of marking, should they wish to.
• Speak to the relevant awarding organisation if you need information on their appeals process, or read the JCQ guidance.
• Consider asking for a review if:
  • an awarding organisation’s moderation results in a change to the marks your school or college gave to students’ work, and you think that was not appropriate
  • you think that an error has been made
• Submit an appeal if you are not satisfied with the review outcome.
• If a student wants a review but an awarding organisation does not accept requests directly from students, you can request one on their behalf. You can also consider such requests from any private candidates you entered.
• Give students the opportunity to appeal if you decide not to ask for a review of marking or decide not to seek access to their script.
• If you remain concerned about an outcome following a review, consider making an appeal to the awarding organisation.

How to decide whether to ask for a review

Awarding organisations must make mark schemes available to schools and colleges before their deadline for accepting reviews. 

You can ask awarding organisations to give you access to marked GCSE, AS and A Level and T Level scripts. This can help you decide whether to ask for a review. 

Awarding organisations set a deadline for the receipt of requests for marked scripts. If a script is requested by their deadline, they must provide a copy in time for you to decide whether to ask for the marking to be reviewed.

What you should do

• Familiarise yourself with the grounds for reviews and appeals.
• If necessary, ask for access to scripts or assessment materials, by the set deadline.

Priority reviews of marking

You can request a priority review of marking if the outcome of the review will be used to access further or higher education. Awarding organisations will aim to complete priority reviews within 15 days and by Thursday 2 September 2027, which is UCAS’s advisory deadline for higher education providers to hold places open for students.

What you should do

• If necessary, ask for a priority review of marking.
• Submit any requests as soon as possible and by 18 August at the latest to enable the review to be carried out by 2 September.

How to request reviews of other administrative decisions

If an awarding organisation makes an administrative decision involving an element of judgement and it affects a student’s results, you can request a review. For example, some decisions could be taken in cases of very late arrival or missing scripts. You should request a review of an administrative decision directly from the awarding organisation. 

Timelines for review and appeal requests

Each awarding organisation must set and publish its own timelines, including the deadlines by which requests for a review or an appeal must be received. 

Ofqual’s rules do not specify set dates for the completion of reviews and appeals but do set out minimum timescales that awarding organisations must meet. These ensure common, minimum timelines for students and schools or colleges. 

Do schools have to pay for reviews and appeals?

Awarding organisations can charge a fee for reviews of marking, reviews of moderation and considering an appeal. They must publish the fees they will charge and be clear about any circumstances in which they will not charge.

What is the Exam Procedures Review Service?

The Exam Procedures Review Service (EPRS) is a final review process run by Ofqual for schools and colleges that remain unsatisfied after an awarding organisation’s own appeal process has concluded.

We will look at whether the awarding organisation has followed our rules and its own procedures correctly. We will not review or re-mark a student’s work as part of the EPRS process.

We cannot tell the awarding organisation to change a student’s grade. The grade will only change if the awarding organisation decides the grade was wrong and needs to be corrected.

EPRS is only available for: 

• GCSEs, AS and A Levels
• Technical Qualifications within a T Level
• Level 3 Project qualifications (EPQ)

Applications to EPRS can only be made by schools or colleges. The only exception is for private candidates who registered for their qualification individually and applied for a review of marking and an appeal without help from a school or college. Applications should be made within 15 working days of receiving the final appeal decision from the awarding organisation. 

For more information about EPRS please contact us.

What you should do

• If you are not satisfied with the result of an appeal, you can ask Ofqual to review the case through EPRS.
• Make any request after the appeal process is over and within 15 working days of it being completed.
• Contact Ofqual if you need more information.

How can I make a complaint?

Ofqual wants all users of organisations and qualifications we regulate to receive a good service and to have things put right when they go wrong.

You can read details on how to make a complaint, raise a concern as a whistleblower, or report malpractice about awarding organisations or qualifications regulated by Ofqual on our complaints procedure page.

We would usually expect you to give an awarding organisation a chance to resolve your complaint by using its complaints process before coming to us.

What you should do

• Give an awarding organisation the opportunity to resolve a complaint about it before contacting Ofqual.
• Contact Ofqual if you still have a complaint or want to report allegations of malpractice.

When can resits be taken?

Students can resit GCSE English language or maths in November if they were aged 16 or over on 31 August. They must wait until the following summer to resit any other GCSE, AS or A Level.

Some VTQs have fixed assessment windows and others operate assessments throughout the year. Please contact your awarding organisation for details.

More information about Ofqual, contact details and useful links

Ofqual regulates awarding organisations that design, deliver and award qualifications and assessments in England. We control entry to the regulated market and have rules and guidance for awarding organisations to make sure regulated qualifications are fit for purpose, valid and delivered securely.

Ofqual’s Understanding grading toolkit is designed to help headteachers and teachers understand and explain how GCSE and A Level qualifications are marked and graded.

Ofqual’s YouTube channel features video resources to help you understand exams, qualifications and assessments in England.

Can I Just Qualify That? is Ofqual’s podcast for teachers.

Ofqual has resources to support exams officers in their roles.

Ofqual’s student guide explains what students need to know before, during and after their exams and assessments.

You can find information on the organisations and the qualifications Ofqual regulates in the Register of Regulated Qualifications. Not all qualifications are regulated by Ofqual.

Ofqual has a common set of rules for all qualifications we regulate, called the General Conditions of Recognition. There are extra rules and guidance specific to certain qualifications, for example GCSEs, AS, A Levels, Technical Qualifications within T Levels and Technical Awards.

For public enquiries: contact Ofqual.