Managing Cambridge Nationals results: June 2023

Nicola Claydon - Customer Support Manager (Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk)

In this blog, you’ll see hints and tips for managing Cambridge Nationals results, including what to look out for if you find you have any missing or incomplete results.

Remember, you can view our full guidance on managing results on our website.

How Cambridge Nationals qualifications work 

Cambridge Nationals are unitised qualifications. This means the qualifications can be taken in chunks, or units, throughout the course. At the end of the course, you make a free certification entry (‘cash-in’) to pull together all of the unit results into an overall subject grade. 

This year, students certificating for legacy Cambridge Nationals qualifications may have a combination of live assessments and an assessed grade for a moderated unit where assessment from 2021/22 was reduced. 

How are Cambridge Nationals results graded? 

The overall grade for Cambridge Nationals will be determined in the standard way by adding together the uniform marks (UMS) for each unit and then awarding the overall grade based on the standard qualification grade boundaries: 

• Where a permitted reduction in the number of assessments has been used or the student is eligible for a special consideration absence, there are two steps: 
  1. First we produce an assessed grade. We do this by calculating an average grade, based on the other grades a candidate has achieved, when the student is certificating. Please see our FAQ on how assessed grades will be calculated for more details. 
  2. We will then assign UMS to the unit that is half the distance between the assessed grade and the grade above. 

Units and qualifications are graded as follows: 

• Pass, Merit, Distinction, Distinction* at Level 2 
• Pass, Merit, Distinction at Level 1 

The difficulty of unitised qualification exam papers may vary from year to year. In order to ensure fairness and consistency across years and within subjects, the raw examination marks are converted into a common scale. This scale is known as the uniform mark scale/score (UMS). It gives a fixed scale with common boundaries that are unchanged year on year and is used to make the marks compatible and comparable. The UMS grade boundaries are available on our grade boundaries page.

To find out more about how unitised grades are calculated you can visit the results pages of our website and you can use our online tool to convert raw scores to UMS. 

How and when we issue results 

As for GCSEs, Cambridge Nationals results are embargoed until the official result release date. The results are made available at 12.01am on restricted results release day (23 August), and students can then be given their results from 8am the following day (24 August).

See the JCQ release of results guidance for further details, as this lets you know who’s allowed access to what and when. 

EDI results files 

You will receive two EDI result files on restricted results day. One results file will contain unit marks and grades, and the other is a certification file which contains qualification marks and grades (your GCSE results will also be in this file). 

If you have requested a reduction in assessment for moderated units for certificating candidates, these results will be included with the rest of your moderated unit results – there will be nothing to distinguish them from units that have been assessed.

We’ll be providing updated EDI results files weekly until the end of the post-results period via Interchange. To access the files, log in to Interchange, hover over ‘Results’ and click on ‘XML/EDI Results’ – if you do choose to use these files, they will overwrite any manual changes you’ve made to results. 

Interchange results reports 

There are a number of separate results reports on Interchange available for you to download from the restricted results release date.

In addition to the statement of marks (results slip) and results and grade threshold report (which contains grade boundary information), you may find the cumulative specification results report useful.

For each candidate, this report shows their qualification grade, total uniform mark, all unit results from all series and an indicator to show which units were used towards the qualification grade.

Have a look at the results reports page of our website for more information and to find examples of these reports. 

Missing or incomplete results 

If you have any missing results, the first thing to check is whether you still need to make a certification entry. You can make a late certification request via Interchange up to the closing date for this service (28 September). 

You may also need to check your candidates have been entered for the correct combination of units. You can find more details on the entries rules page of our website. 

If you still have missing results, you can submit a missing or incomplete results (MIR) request. To submit a request, log into Interchange and hover over ‘Post-results’ in the left hand menu. Click on ‘Missing and incomplete results’ and follow the on-screen instructions. This service is free of charge.

For missing reduction in assessment grades, or where a reduction in assessment request has been made for the wrong unit, please don’t use our missing and incomplete results request service. Instead, email entries@ocr.org.uk with the certification code (Jxxx), unit number (Rxxx) and the student candidate number(s).

If a candidate grade is showing as ‘Q’, a result is pending or is currently unavailable. In each instance we should have contacted your centre in advance to explain why the result is pending. If you have not received any communication from us, please speak with your Head of Centre who will have more information about the issue. 

If you encounter any of these issues, or have any further questions, please get in touch with our Customer Support Centre where our advisors will be more than happy to help.

Remember, on restricted and candidate results days, our Customer Support Centre will open earlier than usual – you can reach them on 01223 553998 between 7am until 5pm.

About the author

Nicola Claydon - Customer Support Manager (Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk)

Nicola started her career in education back in 2005 and has worked in various roles within colleges until she joined OCR in 2010. Nicola worked in the Operations Department before becoming a Customer Support Manager in 2014. Her experience in these roles has provided her with the knowledge to help support centres with the administration of OCR qualifications.