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.

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.

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.

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.