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  • Quality Assurance

Quality Assurance

The Quality Assurance process

Our Quality Assurance process to check the accuracy of grades submitted by schools is a critical part of this year’s exam series and will ensure the value and integrity of the grades awarded to candidates in the June 2021 series. Our priorities remain safety of staff and students and fair progression for candidates in their educational journey, and we want to work together with you to achieve the right outcome for students after a challenging academic year.

We appreciate that delivering results to students by results day will be demanding for schools and for us, and is creating concern for students and parents. This guidance on Quality Assurance will give you the information and help you need, and we ask for your help in making things run as smoothly as possible. If you follow our guidance carefully at the first Quality Assurance check, you will minimise the risk that we have to engage with you in further rounds of checks.

We know we can rely on every school leader and every teacher in Cambridge schools to approach this process with the highest degree of professionalism, consistency and care. With your help, we want to make sure your students and parents feel confident in the fairness of their results in August, and that Cambridge schools worldwide can continue to benefit from long-term trust in Cambridge qualifications. The Quality Assurance process is an important part of giving them that confidence and will help to minimise the number of post-result checks and appeals from students and parents to schools and to us.

In overview:

All schools will be initially asked to send us information for at least one syllabus for which they are submitting school-assessed grades. This information will be the evidence they have used to determine grades for a sample of candidates, plus the Rationale Document for each of the syllabuses that we have selected. We will tell you the syllabuses and the candidates that we require for the Quality Assurance check. Schools will not be able to request that a different syllabus or different candidates are sampled.

If your school’s submission does not pass the initial Quality Assurance check, we will give you feedback, and we may request more evidence from you. We may also carry out Quality Assurance checks on other syllabuses from your school.

If your school’s submission does not pass subsequent Quality Assurance checks, we may adjust your candidates’ grades for the syllabus.

Your candidates’ results may be delayed if your school does not pass the Quality Assurance checks, if we do not receive necessary information by the dates we specify, or if our feedback is not acted on.

We will not be able to release results until the Quality Assurance is complete.

Step-by-step guide to the Quality Assurance process

Our Quality Assurance process begins as soon as a school has submitted their grades to us on the Grade Submission System, which schools can do from 18 May. You must familiarise yourselves with the dates (see below) by which we will need information from you for the Quality Assurance process.

To make this easier, we strongly advise that you save copies of the documents listed below in a place accessible to your Exams Officer. We recommend that you do this before you submit your school-assessed grades to us.

  • The documents in each candidate’s portfolio of evidence for each syllabus
  • The Rationale Document for each syllabus.

The table gives you an overview of all the steps of the Quality Assurance process.

Step Timeframe Quality Assurance activity
1.
Cambridge requests evidence request from schools
25 May–21 June

We will contact schools who have submitted school-assessed grades to us to tell them:

  • which syllabuses we have selected for initial sampling
  • which candidates’ work we want to see
  • how to access our portal for submitting evidence.

We will instruct you to upload the following to our portal for submitting evidence:

  • the required pieces of evidence for each of the requested candidates – the tasks (e.g. the past paper or the questions set) and the candidates’ responses
  • the individual grades you have awarded to each of those pieces of evidence
  • the Rationale Document for the requested syllabus.

You must be available to upload this information to our portal for submitting evidence within 5 days from the date of request.

2.
Assessment Specialists review the evidence
Once these documents are provided to us

Our Assessment Specialists will review the information that you have sent to us: the evidence of the candidates’ work; the grades you awarded to each piece of evidence; and the Rationale Document for the syllabus. They will also review the overall school-assessed grades you submitted on the Grade Submission System.

Early June–10 July

Using this information, our Assessment Specialists will determine whether:

  • the process followed to decide on the grades is reasonable and is consistent with our guidance
  • the grades awarded by the school for the pieces of evidence are reasonable, based on the level of candidate performance demonstrated in the evidence
  • the grades awarded for the pieces of evidence align with the school-assessed grades for the syllabus (i.e. ‘final’ grades)
3.
Initial outcome of Assessment Specialist review

✔ If our Assessment Specialists judge the school-assessed grades to be reasonable, based on the level of performance in the evidence provided, we will not need to contact you again.

25 June–14 July

✖ If our Assessment Specialists find that the grades are not reasonable, based on the level of performance in the evidence provided or on the process you have followed, we will contact the school to ask you to reconsider the grades you have given your candidates. You will then need to submit revised grades on our grade submission system.

1 July–20 July

We will request further information from you at this point which you will need to upload to our portal for submitting evidence. This may include further candidate evidence or checks of further syllabuses. You will need to have the appropriate staff available at this point to submit the information and evidence to us.

4.
Outcome of subsequent Assessment Specialist review
6 July–onward

Once schools have reconsidered their candidates’ grades and submitted the required information to us, our Assessment Specialists will review the evidence again to determine whether the grades awarded by the school are now reasonable.

✔ If our Assessment Specialists now judge the school-assessed grades to be reasonable, based on the level of performance in the revised evidence provided, we will not need to contact you again.

8 July–onward

✖ If this review still finds that the grades are not reasonable, we will communicate this to the school, and we will adjust the candidates’ final grades.

5.
Results day
10 August and 12 August

Results will be released, provided that the school has completed and passed the Quality Assurance checks on time.

If the school or candidates want to dispute the grade issued on results day, this will go through our post-results and appeals processes.

In the case of extra Quality Assurance requests relating to malpractice concerns, our enquiries may run beyond results release dates.

Using the Quality Assurance Portal

When we contact you to send us information and evidence of students’ work for Quality Assurance, you will need to submit this to us using our Quality Assurance portal. You can access the portal by logging in through Direct.

Our walkthrough video below explains how to use the portal.

VIDEO: Using the Quality Assurance Portal

You can also find a step-by-step guide to each stage of the process here: Quality Assurance Portal User Guide (PDF, 1MB)

The Quality Assurance portal accepts a range of file types. The table below shows the file formats we can accept.

File type Accepted formats Limit
Audio 3g2 .aac .aiff .amr .m4a .m4b .mp3 .wav

5GB

Data .xls .xlsx .mdb .accdb .xlsb

5GB

Document .odt .pdf .rtf .txt .doc .docx .dotx .pages

5GB

Images .jpg .png .jpeg .tif .jfif .gif .heic .psd .pcx .bmp .wmf

15MB

Presentation .ppt .pptx .pdf .pptm

5GB

Video .3g2 .3gp .avi .flv .m4v .mkv .mov .mp4 .wmv .mts .mpg

5GB

Web .html .exe

5GB

The portal can accept files that are up to 5GB in size or 15MB for image files. If you want to upload a file that is larger than the sizes above, you’ll need to reduce the file’s size. We recommend using HandBrake (PDF, 349KB) to reduce file sizes where necessary.

Visit our FAQs for more information.

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