Results Guidance – May/June 2023

The results days are getting nearer, so we have provided some useful guidance and support to help students, parents, teachers and Exam Officers at this important time.

We understand this is an especially busy time for you. So, to help you make your final preparations for results days, here’s some useful information and links to guide you through the process, including:

Results – Exams Administration

Post-results services – Exams Administration

Access the results and post-results training webinar

Exams Officers and Centre Administrators can access and download all student results documentation through Centre Services.

If you need, you can access online training and support on how to use Centre Services for Exam Officers and for Centre Administrators.

Schools can share results on the following days:

• Thursday 17 August for International AS and A-level and IPQ
• Thursday 24 August for International GCSE.

Results on both days are available from 8.00am (UK time). This regional time guide will help you find out what time you can access results in your region.

You can also find our restricted results days (for Exams Officers and Head of Centres only) and Results days (for students) on our key dates calendar.

For students and parents – student results are usually available through the Exams Officer at your school. However, please speak to your school about how they’ll be providing your results in advance of results day, so you are aware of the process.

Please be aware that you must arrange collection of your results from your school, as we are unable to confirm any results over the phone or by email, even if the school is closed.

If you need to share your results with a university outside the UK, you can find out how to do this here.

For teachers – we know you’ll be asked many questions by students and parents on and around the results days, so we have provided a definitive guide to the results process, helping you to advise and support students and parents with confidence. Simply take a look at this teacher’s guide to post-results services. You can also find the information you need on grade boundaries and results statistics across all subjects.

If you want to drill down through May/June 2023 grades data to see trends generally within your own school, or even as a comparative overview against other schools in your region, then you can do so using our powerful Enhanced Results Analysis (ERA)™ tool on results day. For more details on how to gain these insights, see how to use Enhanced Results Analysis™. You can also read our blog – using data for student progress.

You’ll receive your results slip from your school showing your provisional results. Results are provisional until certificates are issued. This is so that there’s time for enquiries about results (eg reviews), late award claims and any results that are still pending.

Just to make you aware, the grades awarded to students for May/June 2023 will have equal status to the grades awarded in other years and should be treated in this way by universities, colleges and employers.

There are two possible symbols you might see on your results slip if you have any missing or incomplete results:

No result (X) means a result is not being issued because the student was absent for all parts of the exam, or because of a decision not to issue a result, for another reason.

Pending (Q) indicates that no result has been issued as the marks for one or more components of the exam are not available.

For students and parents – if you receive any missing or incomplete results then get in touch with your school or college.

For schools and colleges – if you receive any missing or incomplete results for one or more of your students, you will need to copy and paste the table on our missing results form into an email and send it to [email protected] with the subject line ‘Processing query’. Please also attach a copy of the seating plan and attendance list, as this will help us to process the query as quickly as we can.

We aim to resolve any query within 24 hours and we will prioritise issues where a university place depends on the outcome.

Students, parents and teachers – you can access grade boundaries for May/June 2023 exams at 8.00am (UK time) on results day. They are useful as they show the minimum number of marks needed for each grade. To view them – and for more guidance on how they work – go to our Results page.

As a useful guideline, we also publish our global results statistics on results day, so if you want to see the overall (global) student performance in our exams by specification and grade then it is easy to access here.

This year we are pleased to say that our qualifications are returning to pre-pandemic standards. We will build protection into the grading process to recognise the disruption that students have faced.

The return to pre-pandemic grading means that international results will be lower than 2022. This also means that results for individual schools/colleges are highly likely to be lower than they were in 2022. It will make the most sense to compare this year’s results with 2019, the last year that the May/June exams were taken before the pandemic. As in any year, results for individual schools will vary.

Marking is happening as normal, and students’ work will be marked anonymously by expert examiners. Students’ grades will be determined only by the number of marks they achieve on the assessments. It does not matter where students are, or the type of school they attend – the same grade boundaries will apply to everyone taking the qualification.

If a student is unhappy with a result, and has a university place pending, we advise requesting a priority review of marking – for AS and A-level (this can take up to 15 calendar days). If a student is unhappy with a result, but does not have a university place pending, you can request the following:

• Priority copy of the marked paper (access to scripts) – to decide if you want a clerical re-check or review of marking
• Clerical re-check
• Review of marking (takes up to 20 calendar days)
• Original marked paper (access to scripts).

You’ll find all the information you need on post-results services on our post-results page.

Any student who would like to improve their grade in a subject will also have the opportunity to take exams in a future series. The next opportunity for OxfordAQA students will be our International GCSE series in November 2023 and our AS and A-Level series in January 2024. They could also resit in May/June 2024. Students should talk to their schools about taking exams in future series.

If a student’s grade changes after their certificate is printed, you can get a corrected version for free if you send back the original certificate. For all other changes (eg name) there is a fee.

Results days are always busy, but we will have extra team members on hand to help if needed. You can contact us with any queries by email at [email protected] or call us on +44 (0)161 696 5995. Our phone lines will be open from 7.00am to 5.00pm (UK time) on restricted release days and results days. You can also find us on social media, so do follow us on Facebook or LinkedIn.

We hope your results days go as smoothly as possible, and we wish you and your students all the best.