At some point of your educational career, not everything will go the way you want it to. However, there is no point stressing about this! You may not get the grade you wished for in an exam, or you might be really close to the grade you wanted and just miss out! An option for you is to get your exam remarked if this is the case. However, if you are on a tight calendar, you may be wondering how long a GCSE remark takes?
On average, a standard review of marking will take up to 20 working days for an outcome to be reached. However, the exam boards also offer a priority service, where a place to university is at stake. In this case, the outcome is decided on an average of 10-15 days later. There are also other services available, such as clerical check and script request that change the times. However, these may not give the same outcome.
In the rest of the article, we will be comparing the different types of remarks, and comparing each exam boards times and fees. To find out more, please read on.
Table of Contents
How long does it take for a GCSE to be remarked?
On average, the standard procedure of reviewing marking takes up to 20 days. However, there are other options available to you.
- Clerical re-mark – this is not a review of marking, but simply a check-up of the numbers. It will check that all the questions have been marked and totalled up. However, it doesn’t check if it has been marked correctly. These are usually cheaper and faster.
- Copy of student’s script – this is the students exam script. Its use is to allow the student to decide whether they should receive a remark, or any other post results service. Sometimes, this is the marked script, or sometimes it is the unmarked script.
- Review of marking – this is the standard marking review which is broken down into 2 parts. The standard review, which gets a second examiner to mark it, along with a clerical recheck in some cases. But then there is also a priority remark, which takes on average only 10 days.
If you want to find out more about these terms, check out this article from Cife. Each exam board will differ, which is why we have made this handy table for you to compare your options.
If you would like to find out more about each specific exam board, you should refer to the links in the table.
| Exam Board | Standard Review of Marking | Priority Review of Marking | Clerical Remark | Request of script |
| AQA | Up to 20 Days | N/A | 10 Days | Arrive within 1 Week |
| Edexcel | Up to 20 days | Up to 15 days | Up to 10 days | N/A (Depends on your school) |
| OCR | Around 1 Week | N/A | Around 1 Week | N/A (Depends on your school) |
| WJEC | WJEC has not supplied specific timings. You should refer to your exam’s office | |||
| CCEA | Up to 20 Days | N/A | Up to 10 Days | N/A (Depends on your school) |
Finally, if you would like to learn more about GCSE remarks, you should click here to go to a Think Student article.
How many students get their GCSEs remarked?
For the summer 2019 GCSE exams, out of a total 5,199,335 grades 279,925 grades were challenged. Of these, 56,680 were changed. That equates to 20% of any grades being challenged being changed, and that being 1.1% of the total grades.
This information was provided by the UK government’s website, which you can access by clicking here.
Which are the hardest and easiest exam boards?
Different exam boards are suited to different students. Edexcel may be easier for one student, but harder for another.
This is because different exam boards use different styles of questions. Your teachers will choose the exam boards they think will get you the best grades and they find the easiest to teach.
However, this choice is extremely subjective!
What are the easiest and hardest exam boards for GCSE Maths?
Edexcel is the most popular option for schools to choose from. However, it is reported that AQA is easier. This of course, depends on subjective opinion, as different students prefer different question styles.
AQA tends to have less problem solving, and each question is separated into several parts, allowing more marks to be awarded.
What are the easiest and hardest exam boards for GCSE English?
Edexcel iGCSE is seen to be the easiest, despite its challenging time limit, but then countered by reasonable grade boundaries.
For the standard GCSE, all exam boards are equally hard as each other. This is because the company Ofqual makes sure of this and if a paper is seen as too challenging, action will be taken.
You can find out more about this on the Ofqual website, if you click here.
What are the easiest and hardest exam boards for GCSE Sciences?
Despite small numbers, OCR is said to be the easiest exam board for sciences but would mean high grade boundaries. The hardest are AQA and Edexcel, but Edexcel is seen quite rarely.
If you would like to find out more about this, and about other subjects, you should click on this link to another Think Student article.