General Qualifications Bulletin - UK - Issue 60

The next two weeks sees the release of both Level 2 and Level 3 General Qualifications results.

Results should not be issued to candidates until 08:00am (BST) on 15 or 22 August depending on the qualification. Please refer to the tables below for a final reminder of what’s happening and when.

Level 3 Qualifications
AS/A level inc, AEA, International AS/A level, Edexcel Award, Level 3 Extended Project (EPQ), Mathematics in Context.

Level 2 Qualifications
GCSE, International GCSE, Project Level 1 and 2, Edexcel Award Level 1 and 2, ELC(A), iPrimary and iLowerSecondary.

Please note that when results are released to centres they are confidential to the head of centre, examinations office staff and senior members of teaching staff within the centre, the consortium or Multi Academy Trust.

You must not disclose your centre’s results, or information derived from these results, with others, including teachers; candidates or parents; Local Authorities; and the media. Please see the JCQ Notice to centres: Release of results June 2024 examinations for more information. You can also find plenty of support for teachers and exams officers on our dedicated results support page.

There is plenty of support available to help you understand your students’ results, and as always, we’ll be here to support you with post-results services and answering any queries you may have.

We’ve produced a guide to help you understand your students’ results and the steps you can take to get more insight about their grades and what to do if you’re unsure that the right grade has been given - using our ResultsPlus and Access to Scripts services. Download the guide now.

Understanding your students’ results - a guide to our post-results services

Ofqual has also published a blog post ahead of results day for AS, A level and T Level.

Looking ahead to level 3 results day for AS, A level, T Level and vocational and technical qualifications

Grade Boundary information will be available to download via Edexcel Online (EOL) on 14 August (AS/A level) and 21 August (GCSE/International GCSE). Grade boundary documents must be treated as secure and confidential information. They must not be published or distributed wider than to Exams Office staff and the Head of Centre until Thursday, when grade boundaries and results are available to students and teachers on our website. This ensures there is no undue anxiety to learners prior to the issue of results.

As a reminder, we publish both grade boundaries and notional component grade boundaries for each qualification. The notional component grade boundaries can be useful as an indicator of grade performance when, for example, an examination paper is used as a future mock examination. There is an explanation of how grade boundaries and notional component grade boundaries and scaling work at the start of each notional component grade boundary document. It is useful to review these when considering applying for a review of marking and moderation.

To help centres understand grade boundaries for 2024 we’ve produced a short guide explaining the approach to grade boundaries that all exam boards will be taking for 2024.

Understanding grade boundaries 2024 – UK qualifications

Letter to students from Ofqual and UCAS
Ofqual’s Chief Regulator, Sir Ian Bauckham CBE, and UCAS’s Chief Executive, Dr Jo Saxton CBE, have written a letter to students who will receive their results on 15 August 2024. The letter outlines important information about results this year. Please do pass this letter on to students and parents.

Letter to students from Ofqual and UCAS

Ofqual has published a blog post providing students with important information about marking, grading and results for 2024. Please do pass this on to your students.

GCSE 9–1 grades to uni places: What you need to know about 2024 exam results

Ofqual has also published an article confirming that marking and grading are happening as normal this summer and this will continue in future years.

Grading continues as normal this summer in England

You can also take a look at the blog on the Education Hub that provides information on results days, grading and what do if students are unhappy with their results.

When is results day 2024? GCSEs, A levels, T Levels and VTQs

Understanding results and grades
We understand that it can be anxious wait for students in the run up to results day, so we’ve put together a guide to Understanding results and grades with helpful information about what to expect on results day and where to find further support. The guide includes information on:

• dates for results days
• receiving and understanding results
• grades and grade boundaries
• what steps to take if they are not happy with their results
• university applications 
• certificates
• where to find further support.

You can also take a look at our dedicated results support page for students, parents and carers where they’ll find all the information they need to understand their results. Please do pass all this important information on to students, parents and carers.

To help results days go as smoothly as possible we’ve created some guidance for Exam’s Officers for all the essential results processes.  

Please take a look at EO Support: Results Days 2024 Essential Information covering important topics, including:

• release dates and times
• results reports
• ResultsPlus
• post-results services
• appeals.

Our Results, Post-Results & Appeals guidance includes information about results and post-results services including:

• A2C / EDI Results
• general qualifications
• vocational qualifications
• ResultsPlus and ResultsPlus Direct
• post-results and appeals.

There is also new General qualifications post-results training module available on the Pearson Development Hub.

When raising any queries with us please include the name of the product, service, system you are contacting us about in the description or subject line. For example, of you are contacting us about a priority Review of Moderation please use 'RoMM' or for a missing A level result please use 'GCE result'. This will help us prioritise any queries which are time sensitive and ensure your learners receive the outcomes they deserve.

JCQ support for results days 
Please do also refer to the JCQ documentation for results day support.

JCQ Release of results: June 2024 examinations guidance

JCQ Post-results services booklet

ResultsPlus 
ResultsPlus is our online results analysis tool that gives you a detailed breakdown of your students’ performance in Pearson Edexcel exams. Providing you with the most detailed analysis available of your students’ performance, ResultsPlus will help you to identify topics and skills where your students could benefit from further learning – helping them gain a deeper understanding of their subject.

Take a closer look at ResultsPlus

Access to Scripts 
Our popular Access to Scripts* service provides visibility and transparency of marking and helps to inform future teaching and learning. 

You can find out more about Access to Scripts on our website, along with FAQs and a step-by-step User Guide. If a paper has been traditionally marked (not online) then these will not be available through Access to Scripts, but you can still request a free copy through the post results section of Edexcel Online.

Access to Scripts availability for Learner Work Transfer 
The Access to Scripts service will be removed for most qualifications where work has been uploaded to the Learner Work Transfer portal from the summer 2024 series.

This means you will no longer have to wait for our processing team to respond to any access to script copy (ATSC) requests with the examiner’s mark breakdown to support any review of marking decisions.

From learner results day, the Learner Work Transfer portal will be available for you to view learner work previously submitted and which the examiner has based their marks on.

You can access the breakdown of marks for individual questions on the learner material via ResultsPlus.

Read more about availability of Access to Scripts and Learner Work Transfer

*This service is available for any exam paper that has been marked online. Written permission must be gained from candidates before scripts can be accessed. 

Review of marking and moderation services and appeals
You can read about the review of marking and moderation (RoMM) services available to you, alongside our information on post-results deadlines.

We also have a guide to applying for post-results services on our support portal which includes a video walk-through of requesting a post results service.

If you need to consider making an appeal after you've received the outcome of a post-results service, you can view our guide to making an appeal on the support portal.

Please take a look at fees for all of our post-results services and our post-results key dates for summer 2024.

Fees for post-results services (from 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025)

Post-results key dates

For more information on key dates for post results services please visit our Post-results services key dates page.