July 2023 Design and Technology update

You may wish to check your access rights in your Edexcel Online account so that you can access the information you need on results days.

Results files and their contents are confidential to the Head of Centre, examinations office staff and senior members of the teaching staff at the centre. Therefore, the Edexcel Online ‘Results’ profile is only granted to these roles, as it allows access to results files on Wednesday results days.

Other teachers that need access to view results should be given ResultsPlus access, as this is designed to meet the needs of teachers to view and analyse the results for their own students. Results are available through ResultsPlus for teachers on the Thursday results days.

You may also wish to ask your Exams Officer to tick 'Exam viewer' in your Edexcel Online profile in case you want to download candidate scripts from results day (having obtained the candidates' consent first).

ResultsPlus is an online results analysis tool that gives you a detailed breakdown of your learners’ performance in Pearson Edexcel exams.

ResultsPlus provides detailed analysis of your learners' performance and will help you to identify potential topics, skills and types of questions where students may need to develop their learning further. You may find it helpful to understand how your learners’ performance compares with class and Pearson Edexcel national averages and to gather some insight data that may support effective teaching and learning approaches.

We’ve also got our ResultsPlus Group Analysis service. Developed to support multi-academy trusts and groups of schools, this service can provide senior leaders with a clear overall picture of student performance across all their schools in Pearson Edexcel exams and BTEC external assessments, and can also be used to analyse your mock exam results, making this service a valuable tool for use throughout the academic year.

We’ll need to set up a separate account for your multi-academy trust or groups of schools, even if your own school is already set up with a ResultsPlus account.

Please ensure you have created a ResultsPlus Group Analysis account before the end of term and be ready for results day. 

Back in September 2022, Ofqual announced what we were to expect in relation to grade boundaries for the 2023 exams.   

Read the Ofqual article

On Results Day, you may wish to find the 2023 grade boundaries for your subject on our Grade Boundaries page.

The A level maximum mark is 335 as this reflects the different weightings of the three A level papers. All three papers are out of 100 but Papers 1 and 2 have a 35% weighting whereas Paper 3 has a 30% weighting. This means that the marks you see are adjusted marks and not raw marks.

The conversion works by multiplying Paper 1 and 2 marks by 1.1725 and the Paper 3 mark by 1.005.

If you would like to see the cumulative percentage of candidates at each grade boundary as a percentage of the total cohort, you will need to visit the Grade Statistics Page.

The Access to Scripts service allows you to view your candidates’ marked scripts online or download as PDFs, providing transparency of marking and to help you make decisions around requests for reviews of marking and inform future teaching and learning.

The Access to Scripts service provides a rich source of information, enabling detailed analysis to inform teaching and learning and support students, giving insights and visibility that performance data alone cannot provide.

The portal can only be accessed by Edexcel Online users who have the 'Exam Viewer' profile ticked on Edexcel Online. Your exams officer gives teachers access to 'Exam Viewer'.

Please note that these scripts do not contain examiners' annotations.

If scripts have been marked 'traditionally' (i.e. not online), you will need to request them, free of charge, by the published deadline, via the Post Results section of Edexcel Online as in previous exam series.

Access To Scripts via Script Viewer is available from Results Day until 15 December 2023.

Candidate consent is required before requesting script copies, as per section 6.2.1 of the JCQ's Post-Results Services guide.  Candidate consent can only be obtained after results have been published.

Candidate consent forms can be found in Appendix B of the JCQ Post results Services document.

Review of marking of externally assessed components (Service 2)

This is a check that our examiners have marked externally assessed components correctly and includes:

• a clerical check (Service 1)
• a review of marking of units/components by a senior examiner

You can ask us to review the marking of exam papers for individual candidates and the results for each candidate will be reported separately. This service isn't available for internally assessed/externally moderated coursework components.

Candidates’ marks or grades can go up, down or stay the same.

The deadline for completion is within 20 calendar days of receiving the request.

To get a copy of the reviewed exam paper, you should request an Access to Script (ATS) service at the same time as submitting the Service P2 request. There is a fee for this additional service.

The deadline for us to receive your request for a review of marking is 28 September.

Centres must obtain written candidate consent for clerical re-checks and
reviews of marking, as with these services candidates’ marks and subject grades
may be lowered.  Candidate consent must be obtained after the publication of results.

Candidates must be informed that their marks and subject grades could go
down as well as up and must provide their written consent before a request is
submitted. (A suggested form for centres to use is included as Appendix A of the JCQ Post-results Guide).