Role of the External Examiner

The minimum duties associated with your role are therefore:

• to approve proposed examination papers and draft coursework assignment briefs for assessments which count towards final awards, including those set by partner organisations;
• see and agree samples of assessed work from across the grades, including failures, in order to satisfy yourself that all students are being fairly classified;
• attendance at the appropriate examination committee – you will be asked to give your formal assent to the recommendations of the examination committee;
• the submission of an annual report on the University template, providing comments on the standards of marking, and other aspects of teaching, learning and assessment, for the programme team to act on during the following year.

Other duties, as appropriate to provision being examined, may include:

• for examiners of collaborative provision, visits to the partner organisation/s delivering the programme;
• for examiners on professional programmes, visits to see students on practice placements;
• for examiners of apprenticeships with integrated End Point Assessments, additional duties and reporting requirements will be specified according to the requirements of the apprenticeship standard. 

In respect of your moderation duties, any significant differences between first and second markers should have been resolved through the internal moderation process before submission to the external examiner.  However, in exceptional circumstances, external examiners may also be asked to:

• act as arbitrator on borderline cases;
• comment on the marking standards of internal examiners and make recommendations for changes to marks (taking into account the potential impact on the whole cohort – you may not alter individual grades).

You are not required to meet with students, unless this has been specified as a requirement, but many examiners find this very useful - if you wish to do so, please ask the Programme Lead to arrange this for you.

The University and its partners should ensure that you receive the documentation you require in sufficient time to enable you to carry out your duties, and you should be provided with a schedule at the start of the academic year giving key dates, so that you know when to expect to receive draft papers for approval, assessed work, for moderation, dates of examination committees, etc – please contact your Programme Lead if you do not receive this information.

In carrying out your role, you also have the right to:

• gain reasonable access to any assessed parts of the programme/s you examine;
• comment on work other than that submitted towards final awards;
• request additional sampling of students’ work where an equity issue is highlighted by the internal external examining procedures;
• access the evidence used in the assessment of APL claims and comment on the procedure;
• select candidates for individual interview, if appropriate;
• participate in discussions relating to cases of suspected or proven academic misconduct by students.

External examiners also play a valuable role in the continued improvement of Brookes’ provision through the processes for modification of provision, and you may therefore on occasion also be asked to comment and advise on proposed changes to (in particular) the assessment strategies for the modules/programmes you examine

External examiners’ annual reports are key documents in assuring the academic standards of the University’s awards, so it is essential that they are comprehensive and cite the evidence upon which their judgements and comments are based. All external examiners are asked to submit their reports on the University’s template, which has been designed to meet national expectations for such reports and is available on the APQO website 

Reports for collaborative programmes should, where appropriate, distinguish between issues that relate to the home programme and those that relate to the provision delivered by different partners.  

Staff and students’ names should not be used in reports – they will be removed before publication of the report. 

Please ensure you are aware of the month in which you will be expected to submit your report when you take up your appointment – this should be set out in your appointment letter.

You are asked to submit your annual report to the APQO (via the externals@brookes.ac.uk email account) within one month of the examination committee for the provision you examine.  Failure to submit reports in a timely fashion or to provide them to an adequate standard in the required format, will be regarded as grounds upon which to terminate an external examiner’s contract.  The APQO will send out reminders when reports become due (or overdue), but the University reserves the right to withhold payment of fees if the report is so late as to be of no use (see Use of reports below). 

Annual reports should be submitted – in Word format - by email on the electronic template to a dedicated external examiners’ email address managed by the APQO.  Receipt will be acknowledged by the Academic Policy and Quality Office, who will then make arrangements for payment of your annual fee.  

Once received, the APQO sends the report to the Subject Coordinator/Programme Lead or Liaison Manager (LMs are responsible for ensuring reports on collaborative provision are copied to programme managers at partner organisations) and other staff responsible for academic quality and standards of provision in the Faculty: namely, the Associate Dean (Education and Student Experience), the Faculty Head of Quality Assurance & Validations, and the Faculty Quality Officer.  

Responses are prepared by the subject or programme lead, liaising as necessary with the Associate Dean Education and Student Experience (ADESE) and support Directorates, to incorporate responses to any institutional issues that have been raised.  Responses should be approved by the ADESE and sent out to the external examiner within six weeks of the report.  If you have made negative answers to any of the yes/no standards questions on the report template, the Associate Dean will meet with the programme leader and other colleagues to address the issues immediately, and draw up an action plan for monitoring by the Faculty quality committee. 

Your annual report is a key source of evidence in the annual quality monitoring process.  Any issues identified for action by the external examiner must be included in the programme action plan, which should be shared with you.  If it is not sent to you as a matter of course, please ask the Programme Lead or Programme Administrator.  

An annual analysis of the institutional issues, identified good practice, and any areas of concern (that are serious, or common across a number of reports) raised in external examiners’ reports forms part of the Annual Quality Review prepared by the Head of the Academic Policy & Quality Office for consideration by the University’s Quality & Learning Infrastructure Committee. This report is also appended to the annual assurance report which is submitted to the Board of Governors in November each year. External examiners’ reports, together with responses from programme teams, also provide direct evidence on the quality and standards of provision for periodic review and re-validation panels

External examiners’ reports are made available to University staff and students through publication on the VLE.  The University does not place the full reports received from external examiners in the public domain, but under the Freedom of Information Act we may be asked to release them on request.  The information released in response to requests for the personal details of external examiners will be limited to name, job title and the name and address of the examiner’s employer as this concerns an examiner’s professional and working life and such information is considered to be already in the public domain.  If an examiner is retired, they will be described as ‘independent’.  

You have the right to report directly to the Vice Chancellor on matters which you consider to pose a serious risk to the standards of an Oxford Brookes award.  In this case, you may make a confidential report to the Vice Chancellor, Professor Alistair Fitt, at:

Oxford Brookes University
Clerici 2.04
Headington campus
Oxford
OX3 0BP
afitt@brookes.ac.uk 

If you consider that the matters you have raised relate to particularly serious, University-wide problems which have not been properly addressed through the University’s internal procedures, you may wish to make use of the Quality Assurance Agency’s concerns procedure.  The QAA will investigate concerns about UK higher education providers which indicate serious systemic or procedural problems - details of how to submit a concern can be found on the QAA website.