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Mathematics A is the only GCSE for which we aren't currently offering modular exams.
For modular GCSEs
Modular GCSEs are broken down into units which are tested individually throughout your course. If you don't do as well as you hoped in a particular unit, you can resit and your best mark will usually go forward when we calculate your overall grade.
You are awarded a raw mark for the work you have done in each unit. This may be from coursework or from an exam. This mark is just the number of marks you have obtained from the total available. During the awarding process, we decide where the grade boundaries lie and you are awarded a grade based on where your mark lies within these boundaries.
Raw marks are converted to a uniform mark using the Uniform Mark Scale (UMS) to take account of variations in difficulty between papers. Question papers may vary slightly in difficulty from year to year. For example, a mark of 53 in one paper in a January exam session might represent the same level of achievement as a mark of 49 in a different version of the same paper in the following summer exam session. The Uniform Mark Scale (UMS) ensures that these two marks receive the same value when contributing to the final grade and it is the UMS mark that's printed on your results slip.
At the end of your course, the UMS marks for all of the individual components for each GCSE are added up to give you an overall mark. This overall mark is then converted to an overall grade based on the percentage of UMS marks you have achieved:
| Grade |
% of UMS marks |
| A* |
90 |
| A |
80 |
| B |
70 |
| C |
60 |
| D |
50 |
| E |
40 |
| F |
30 |
| G |
20 |
For Mathematics A (linear mathematics)
You are awarded a raw mark for the work you have done. During the awarding process, we decide where the grade boundaries lie and you are awarded a grade based on where your mark lies within these boundaries. | | | | |
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In order to get an overall grade, your modular GCSE must be cashed in.
Each unit and cash-in has a unique code. You have to take all the individual units and then your school or college has to tell us you want to cash in, so that we know to give you an overall GCSE grade. For example, the Edexcel Art and Design: Three-Dimensional Design GCSE is made up as follows:
| Subject title |
Cash-in code |
Unit codes |
|
Three-Dimensional Design (short course) |
3TD01 |
Unit 1: 5TD03
Unit 2: 5TD04 |
|
Three-Dimensional Design |
2TD01 |
Unit 1: 5TD01
Unit 2: 5TD02 |
If you don’t take all of these units, you can still cash in, as long as you were put forward for them all. For example, you may have taken a unit but were absent on the day of the exam. As such, you wouldn’t get a mark for that unit. On your results slip, this would show with a # sign, to indicate that it’s incomplete (for example, 'E#'). | | | | |
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Almost all of the GCSEs currently being examined by us are modular qualifications. This means you can take exams for individual units at different times.
Question papers may vary slightly in difficulty from year to year. For example, a ‘raw’ mark of 53 in one paper in a January exam session might represent the same level of achievement as a ‘raw’ mark of 49 in the following summer exam session. The Uniform Mark Scale (UMS) ensures that these two ‘raw’ marks receive the same value when contributing to the final grade. The Uniform Mark Scale (UMS) also ensures that results for different GCSE subjects can be compared to one another in a consistent way.
GCSE ‘raw’ marks are converted into UMS marks, and a grade is awarded according to these charts:
GCSE marked out of 400
| Grade |
A* |
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
| UMS marks |
360 |
320 |
280 |
240 |
200 |
160 |
120 |
80 |
GCSE marked out of 300
| Grade |
A* |
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
| UMS marks |
270 |
240 |
210 |
180 |
150 |
120 |
90 |
60 |
GCSE marked out of 200
| Grade |
A* |
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
| UMS marks |
180 |
160 |
140 |
120 |
100 |
80 |
60 |
40 | | | | | |
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There are two common reasons why you might not have an overall GCSE grade as you expected:
- your school or college didn’t cash in your units for an overall GCSE grade
- you haven’t completed all of the units for a complete GCSE.
If you don’t have a grade that you expected, the best thing to do is speak to the exams officer at your school or college and ask them to get in touch with us. | | | | |
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Your certificate will be sent to your school or college. If you finished your course in November the latest your centre will receive your certificate is 28 February.
If you finished your course in January the latest your centre will receive your certificate is 31 May.
If you finished your course in June the latest your centre will receive your certificate is 31 October. | | | | |
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Special consideration is when we issue you a calculated result or extra marks because you’ve had an illness, injury or experienced other personal circumstances that have affected your performance.
If you think you may be entitled to special consideration, you should speak to your exams officer. They will make a request on your behalf and we make decisions on a case-by-case basis.
Special consideration isn’t shown on the statement of results you’re given by your school or college. However, it is on the subject mark reports that are sent to schools and colleges.
If you’d like to know whether special consideration was requested on your behalf, please check with your exams officer. | | | | |
| | | | We can make changes such as misspelled names very quickly. We suggest you ask your exams officer to contact us to request any changes.
These requests must come from someone at your centre as we have no way of identifying students who call or email us. If we can’t identify you, we can’t make changes to confidential information.
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You can compare your results with those of others who have completed the same exam by looking at our statistics.
This image may help you to understand the layout of the statistics documents.
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You can ask your centre to request that we return the original version of your marked question papers. We can't provide photocopies of marked GCSE scripts.
Depending on how your paper was marked, you may receive your script as an electronic pdf file.
We can't provide you with marked multiple-choice answer sheets.
How do I get my exam paper back?
Please speak to your exams officer. They will make an ‘Access to Scripts’ request on your behalf.
As with other UK exam boards, we're not allowed to send out a copy of your paper until after the re-mark deadline has passed. This means that if you are considering getting your paper re-marked you should request this service instead. Your exams officer can ask us to send a copy of your re-marked paper.
If you miss the deadline to apply for a copy of your exam paper, we won't be able to process your request.
Deadlines and costs
The table below shows the deadline for submitting an Access to Scripts request for each exam series. We charge £7.75 to process each Access to Scripts request.
|
Exam session |
Deadline |
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November exams |
28 February |
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January exams |
28 April |
| March exams |
30 May |
| Summer exams |
4 October | | | | | |
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Yes. You can ask your centre to return any project, coursework or controlled assessment.
How do I get my coursework back?
Edexcel (or your school) will keep your coursework until after results day, in case your school wants to ask questions about your result. If you want your coursework back after results day, please speak to your teacher or exams officer. If we have your work, your teacher or exams officer will be able to request that we return it. | | | | |
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Yes, if your school requests a re-mark.
Is a re-mark the best option for me?
During a re-mark your grade may go up, down or stay the same. If your grade goes down, you cannot reject the re-mark and go back to the original grade - the only way to improve your grade would be to re-sit the exam.
The majority of re-mark requests do not result in a change to a grade - simply because the re-mark has shown that the original grade was accurate.
What does a re-mark involve?
A senior examiner will re-mark your paper, checking your answers against the mark scheme. This senior examiner won’t have marked your paper before.
Once your paper has been re-marked we do a clerical check to make sure that:
- everything you have written has been marked
- all of the marks have been added up to give the correct total mark
- we’ve entered your total mark correctly on our systems
- special consideration has been taken into account (if it was applied for before the exam).
You can request that we only perform the clerical check. If you do, this will cost less than having a full re-mark.
How long will it take to get my paper re-marked?
We aim to have the result of your re-mark back to you within 30 days, but if you miss the deadline you will not be able to have your paper re-marked.
Deadlines
| Exam session |
Deadline |
| November exams |
7 February |
| January exams |
16 April |
| March exams |
16 May |
| Summer exams |
20 September |
Costs
Your school or college may ask you to pay for your re-mark before they submit your application. The table below shows the amount we charge to process each type of re-mark.
| Re-mark type |
Cost |
| Clerical Check |
£10.30 |
| Standard re-mark |
£23.20 |
Refunds
You may be able to request a refund from your school or college if your re-mark shows that we have made a mistake. We won't charge your school or college when:
- the paper you have re-marked has already been used to generate a final grade (that is, you have been entered for a cash-in) and your overall grade changes as a result of the re-mark.
- the paper you have re-marked hasn't been used to generate a final grade (that is, you haven't been entered for a cash-in) and your unit grade changes as a result of the re-mark.
What happens if I am still not happy with my grade after a re-mark?
If you're still not satisfied after a re-mark, you can ask your centre to appeal on your behalf. Appeals do not normally involve re-marking your work a second time, but work will be re-marked if there is evidence that the correct re-marking procedure wasn’t followed during the original re-mark.
Your centre has 14 days after receiving the outcome of your re-mark to appeal. We can't process appeal requests after this deadline. | | | | |
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Your teacher marks all project work, coursework and controlled assessment. It is then moderated, meaning that Edexcel requests a sample of your teacher’s marked work and we check that we agree with their assessment.
Moderation is necessary to make sure that all students have their coursework assessed according to the same standards. Most of the time, your teacher’s marks will be approved and accepted unchanged. However, sometimes marks are reduced or raised, if your teacher’s marking was judged to have been too lenient or too harsh.
If you think that the mark on your results slip is not the mark your teacher gave you, please check with your teacher to see what happened to marks after moderation. If Edexcel did not adjust your mark, talk to your teacher or exams officer and they’ll get in touch with us. If we did adjust your mark, your teacher will need to decide if they want to send back all of the work from your school or college for re-moderation.
Can I get my coursework re-marked?
Every school or college that enters students for external exams must have an appeals procedure in place. If you think Edexcel has the wrong mark, you must first follow this appeals process. Your school or college will involve Edexcel if it can’t settle the matter internally.
Can I get my coursework re-moderated?
It is not possible to re-moderate an individual piece of coursework or re-moderate work where we didn't change your teacher's mark. Coursework can be re-moderated if we changed the marks given by your teacher, but it is up to your school to decide on whether they request this.
The rules around marking and re-marking coursework and controlled assessments are set by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) and apply to all major awarding organisations within the UK.
When Edexcel receives a request for coursework re-moderation, the coursework of all students originally entered at your school or college goes through the moderation process again.
Your teacher or exams officer will be able to give you more information on this process. | | | | |
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Resitting is often a possibility if you want to improve the result of a particular module. Below you can see more detailed information about the resit opportunities for the different GCSEs we offer.
Resitting in summer 2013
Linear Mathematics (1MA0)
For linear mathematics, you need to take all of the exams in the same exam session. This means you will need to resit both the calculator and non-calculator paper if you want to improve your grade.
All other current specification GCSEs
Summer 2013 will be the last opportunity for students to receive an overall grade by resitting individual units and not the entire qualification.
If you want to resit units to improve your grade there are a few things to keep in mind:
- Only current specification GCSE units will be available. These units are identified by unit codes which begin with a number and then two letters (for example, 5BS01 or 5ET1H). It's no longer possible to resit any of our legacy specification exams.
- Each module can be resat once before you receive your final grade. If there is more than one tier, taking both the higher and foundation papers will use up your resit opportunity for this module.
- You need to complete at least 40% of the course in your final exam session. This is called the terminal rule. It means that, if you want to resit a module after you have received your final grade, you may need to resit other modules as well. If you have already used up your resits for other modules, you will not be able to receive a new grade by resitting.
To see the percentage that the module you want to resit contributes to the total grade, you’ll need to look at the specification for your subject. You can find the specification for your subject on the qualification pages:
New Science specifications (GCSE from 2011)
English, ICT and Maths (GCSE from 2010)
All other current GCSE subjects (GCSE from 2009)
Once you’ve opened the specification, find the ‘specification at a glance’ section. There’ll be a summary of each unit (or module), with the percentage it contributes to the overall subject grade. In the example below, the percentage contribution is highlighted in the red square:
Resitting after summer 2013
From September 2013, you'll need to resit all of the exams you've previously completed if you want to try to improve your grade.
With the exception of English and Maths (which can be assessed in November), GCSE exams will only be available in a summer exam session. | | | | |
| | | | We want you to achieve the highest grade you can and so, usually, not doing as well in a re-sit will not affect your overall grade, as your best mark goes forward. The only exception to this is when a re-sit is in your final exam session. If a module forms part of the 40% needed to obey the terminal rule, whatever mark you receive for this module goes towards your final grade – even if it is lower than your original mark. | | | | |
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Before deciding to re-sit, discuss your results with your teachers. You may find that a re-sit is not your best option. Sometimes, students don't do as well on the next units because their mind is focusing on improving the grade of an earlier unit instead. Remember, it is much more important to get a good mark on a unit that has a higher weighting. | | | | |
| | | | Many exams are offered two or three times a year but some are only available once. You can check when your unit is next available by looking at our exam timetables or by speaking to your exams officer. There is a charge for entering each exam and you will need to check with your exams officer to see if your school will pay for you to re-sit. If you have to pay the entry fee yourself, you can find what we charge your centre on the fees page of our website. However, please be aware that many schools and colleges will charge an administration cost on top of our fee. | | | | |
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