Examination Boards - Keele University
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Examination Boards

Constitution, membership and responsibilities

The Constitution, membership and responsibilities of Subject Examination Boards are described in University Regulation 9.

Guidance for Subject Examination Boards 2012

1. Notice of the board meeting and agenda

Each member of the Board, including the External Examiners, should be given notice of each meeting well in advance and normally not later than one month before the meeting.  This is the responsibility of the Chair of the Board. An agenda should be distributed not later than one week before the meeting.

Please note: for the meeting at the end of Semester 2 to discuss progress and awards the relevant SCIMS reports may not be available until the day of the meeting.

A template for the agenda is given at Annex A of Guidance for Schools Boards of Examiners 2012.

2. Minutes of the board meeting

Formal records of the proceedings of all meetings of all Boards of Examiners must be kept in the form of minutes, including those Boards convened solely or partly for the purpose of agreeing examination papers and/or project/thesis/dissertation titles/topics.

A template for the minutes is given at Annex B of Guidance for Schools Boards of Examiners 2012.

The minutes should be confirmed provisionally by the Chair of the Board, to allow for actions to be taken, then confirmed by the next formal meeting of the Board.

A copy of the minutes must be kept in the School's records; it is the responsibility of the Head of School to ensure that this is done.

The full surname and initial(s) of all members of the Board of Examiners should appear in the minutes, together with the following information:

  • the capacity in which each is a member of the Board of Examiners (i.e. internal or external examiner);
  • for internal examiners, the School to which they belong;
  • for external examiners, the institution to which they are affiliated;
  • in the case of absent members, the reasons for their absence.

Where decisions of principle (whether on individual cases or on the process as a whole) have been taken which might be deemed to set precedents, the decision and the grounds on which it was taken should be recorded clearly; where such a decision concerns an individual student, the student's name should be recorded in the minutes.

 Where decisions on or relating to the assessment of individual students or groups of students have been agreed with the external examiner(s) by correspondence before the meeting of the Board of Examiners, such decisions should be confirmed by the Board and the correspondence will then become part of the minutes of the meeting.

 Members of the Board should be asked to make any declarations of interest and these should be recorded in the minutes, together with any action resulting from the declaration.

 Any comments of substance made by external examiners, either verbally at the meeting or in writing before the meeting, should be recorded in the minutes.

3. Distribution and retention of paperwork

The mark sheet, signed by the external examiner, should be forwarded to Records and Exams for safekeeping. The minutes of the board should be retained in the School and the outcomes recorded on SCIMS.

The agenda, papers and minutes of the Board should not be distributed to non-members and the paperwork treated as confidential for data protection reasons.  This paperwork, plus the SCIMS records, must be stored and retained as defined in the University Records Disposal Schedule at http://www.keele.ac.uk/media/keeleuniversity/paa/policiesanddocuments/Records%20Disposal%20Schedule.pdf

 There must be only one School record of the board process and outcomes and staff members must delete all working records from their PC, or securely dispose of paper records, after a Subject Board (although the member of staff representing the Subject at the University Examination Boards may retain these records for their reference until those Boards have met and the results issued to students).

 4. Decisions on candidates at the borderline of a higher degree classification

 The guidance on this was agreed by the Standards Sub-Group in 2008.  This is given at Annex C of Guidance for Schools Boards of Examiners 2012.  Appended to Annex C is a mapping of the standard degree algorithm and the additional criteria applied by SCIMS for borderline candidates.

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The above information including the annexes is also available as a document:

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