Most young adults around the UK will have recently received GCSE and A-level results. The new, tougher, GCSEs come with marks in the scaled 1 to 9, whilst other exams and A-levels retain the alphabetic coding. This can be a stressful time for young people, especially if they are depending on the results in order to go into University, and for some this will be a joyous time of great celebration, for others there may be questions about how the forecast mark was not achieved and why.

One of the questions that often comes up in families where the GCSE or A-level results have not met the grade expected is why that has happened. Obviously a conversation with the school or college is very important and will help to get some insight, but unless you see how the exam script was marked, and the comments of the markers, it can be difficult to get a great insight from meeting with the school. Ultimately it may be that something was missed in the marking, or even in a award appeal, and you may not know.

One way that can help with gaining greater understanding of the exam results is to make use of the new GDPR regulations that came into force in May 2018. GDPR has placed new obligations on organisations about how they handle personal data and in particular how it is managed and made available to data subjects and other parties. For many organisations this has led to changes about what data is kept and how it is retained, and for many individuals it has enabled access to information held by organisations that was previously unknown. For example, GDPR allows you to request all records kept about you and this can include information about your exam performance. This can include your mark, examiner comments, and minutes of examination appeals panels. In Universities these are often made available to students in any case, but this is not always true of GCSE and A-level exams when it may matter just as much, if not more so. This may be an additional burden for schools and exam boards that they may not be prepared for and need to take action on if they are in receipt of such requests as this information must be supplied free of charge. A Subject Access Request (as they are known) must be met within 40 days or there are legal consequences, so it is good practice to be familiar with what to do should one arrive.

So, if you are wanting to find out more about your exam results and the institution does not provided them routinely, you can now request them under GDPR and the institution is required to provide them within 40 days. Helpfully, the Information Commissioners Office has provided a useful guide on obtaining your detailed results and some guidance on how to make an appeal if you believe you have grounds. By using this approach you can gain real insight into the marking regime and also pick up if the examiner made a mistake, procedure was not followed, or even that there has been an unintentional bias introduced. This could make the difference between getting the grade that was expected or not and for some this could turn disappointment into a success!