External Examiners’ Reports

The report should be completed using the University’s electronic submission system. The report template can be found at: https://intranet.swan.ac.uk/ExternalExaminers/

Reports should be sufficiently detailed, addressing each of the items raised in the report form template. Where a report is deemed to be lacking in detail, it may be referred back to the External Examiner for revision.

The report draws extensively on the relevant Advice and Guidance of the QAA’s UK Quality Code: External Expertise. External Examiners’ comments on the examining process are required, including observations on the structure and content of the programme of study and its delivery, and also areas of good practice and opportunities to enhance the quality of student learning opportunities. Topics include:

Assessment Practice

• Appropriateness and comprehensiveness of assessment methods to the curriculum and whether or not these are clearly demonstrated in the evidence reviewed;
• Quality and appropriateness of the examination papers and coursework materials and usefulness of feedback to students;
• Sufficiency of number and range of papers from the whole cohort to enable External Examiners to determine that the internal marking was appropriate and consistent;
• The adequacy of moderation arrangements;
• Examples of good, interesting or innovative practice.

Quality and Standards of the Programme

• The appropriateness of the aims and intended learning outcomes for the programme and its structure and content;
• Student achievement/performance (e.g. pass rates, quality of work etc); and
• Comparison with national standards (subject benchmarks, Qualifications Framework and the requirements of Professional Bodies).

Administrative Arrangements

• Was adequate information provided on the programme/course aims;
• The syllabus and marking schemes used to assess it;
• Were questions for approval received(and in good time);
• Were model answers provided;
• If appropriate, were arrangements for Examination Boards satisfactory;
• Arrangements for inspecting examination material or other forms of assessment, opportunity to meet students (if appropriate);
• Adherence to Assessment Regulations.

Collaborative Arrangements 

• If an External Examiner’s duties have been extended to include consideration of students under an associated collaborative agreement, please comment on any specific issue relating to collaborative arrangements not covered in the above sections.

External Examiners are politely requested not to identify individual students or staff in the report, except in exceptional circumstances where the recognition of noteworthy practice or exemplary performance is felt to be important.

External Examiners are encouraged to wait until they have moderated the dissertations to submit one complete report that covers both Part One and Part Two.

For Faculty Examination Boards held in June (undergraduate programmes), the report is due within six weeks of the date of the Board (usually July 31). If the Examination Boards are held at times other than June, the reports are expected within a period of one month following the meeting.

Reports for postgraduate taught programmes are due by 6 December.

For postgraduate taught programmes, we ask that External Examiners communicate any urgent matters relating to the taught modules following the June examination board so that changes may be made prior to the next teaching of those modules. However, a specific report form is not required for this activity. Such issues, and the response to them, should be summarised in the External Examiner’s Annual Report which covers Part One and Part Two which is to be submitted to the University by 6 December.

If an External Examiner does not submit a report, the PVC (Education) will take such steps as appropriate to the circumstances to obtain it, and/or may choose to issue a letter of premature termination as a result.

Failure to submit reports or situations of unsatisfactory performance can lead to an informal warning or the premature termination of an External Examiner’s contract. Fees are not paid until a satisfactory report is submitted.

External Examiners’ reports for collaborative programmes are reviewed in exactly the same manner as for programmes taught directly by the University. A copy is sent to the appropriate member of staff at the Collaborative Partner and it is expected that there will be a joint development of a response to the Examiner’s report.

At the end of the period of appointment, an External Examiner is expected to provide an overview  in their annual report of issues that have arisen which will be conveyed to their successor.

If the External Examiner wishes to raise a sensitive or confidential issue they may write directly to the Vice Chancellor of Swansea University.

The PVC (Education) and the Director of Academic Services receive copies of External Examiners’ reports. If their attention is drawn to any issue of concern which requires urgent action, this can be dealt with outside the quality assurance committee structure, but must involve the Faculty and other relevant staff. Reports on the action taken, if any, will be provided to the Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee, as appropriate.

External Examiners are responsible for:

• Preparing an annual report on the Faculty’s provision for which they are responsible for overseeing;
• Submitting the report in a timely manner (within six weeks of the Examination Board – for those held in June, i.e. by 31 July), or one month after the Examination Board;
• For postgraduate taught programmes, submitting specific concerns about the taught modules directly to the Programme Director/Examinations Officer shortly after the Examination Board in June and completing an annual report which includes moderation of dissertations (i.e. Part One and Part Two) by 6 December;
• Ensuring that the subject team respond adequately/with justification with respect to recommendations made to assure the standards and/or enhance quality.

When the report is submitted via the web-based application, it is immediately available to:

• The PVC (Education) who is also the Chair of the Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee;
• The Director of Academic Services;
• The relevant Executive Dean or nominee;
• The Director of the Faculty Learning and Teaching Committee;
• The appropriate Programme Director;
• Academic Quality Services team members;
• Principal of the relevant collaborative partner institution (where appropriate).

Academic Quality Services staff will prepare a Faculty Summary Report for the Chair of the Progression and Awards Board for consideration, as part of the University’s Quality Assurance procedures.

External Examiners’ reports are made widely available to those University and Faculty Committees responsible for quality assurance. The membership of these Committees will include student representatives. Consequently, student representatives will have access to the External Examiner’s report and Faculty’s response to the report through the relevant committee structures and are expected to inform/contribute to the response.

The reports are also available to the wider Swansea University student community and can be accessed here.

External Examiners may submit separate confidential reports on a programme directly to the Vice Chancellor. These confidential reports are not made available to students or to the relevant University Committees.

The Programme Director drafts a response to the External Examiner’s report using an on-line template and consults with members of the Board of Study. Where individual students are mentioned in the report, the programme director will act in accordance with the Policy on Redaction of Personal Identifiers from External Examiners’ Reports.

If the programme is delivered collaboratively, then input from the collaborative partner is required.

Board of Studies aren’t obliged to adopt/implement all recommendations made by an External Examiner. However, a strong justification for not adopting the recommendation must be made and outlined in the response template.

The response template has a section asking the programme director to reflect on the progress attained regarding the previous year’s action plan. It is important for Boards of Studies and Faculty Learning and Teaching Committees to monitor their action plans during the academic year.

The Faculty Learning and Teaching Committee must approve the proposed subject level response from the Board of Study and consider any Faculty-wide issues. Where possible, there should be sufficient discussion to assure the students of the rationale of any proposed actions (or inactions).

The Chair of the Faculty Learning and Teaching Committee can return and request revisions to the intended actions they are dissatisfied with the robustness of the proposed response. There may then be an iterative process in which further revised response templates are reviewed and considered.

Once approved at Faculty level, the response template along with the report is submitted to Academic Quality Services for review. Summary reports are prepared for the Progression and Awards Board. A copy of the report and response is returned to the External Examiner for their information.

In addition to the institutional response, it is the usual expectation that Faculties keep their External Examiners informed of developments.

Ideally, approved subject-level response templates should be submitted within one month of receipt of the External Examiner’s report being submitted. For the majority of undergraduate programmes, the expected submission date is September 30.

The responses should be submitted in a timely manner to ensure that the experience of students in the next cohort is assured and, wherever possible, enhanced.

Programme Directors and Boards of Studies are expected to undertake ongoing implementation and monitoring of their actions in response to the recommendations of the External Examiner and to report upon such progress in subsequent response templates. See the Boards of Studies standard agendas. Similarly, Faculty Learning and Teaching Committees should keep Faculty-wide issues under scrutiny.

The Executive Dean has ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the Faculty addresses any issues of concern promptly and that a relevant course of action is agreed. Where the issue relates to a particular module, the Executive Dean must ensure that this is communicated to the module coordinator and that necessary changes are acted upon. The operational responsibility may be delegated to, for example, the Chair of the Faculty’s Learning and Teaching Committee.

Faculty staff are required to:

• Ensure that an appropriate response (using the set template) is drafted in response to the report in a timely manner and that reasons for not adopting the recommendations of an External Examiner have robust justification;
• Consider and respond to Faculty-wide issues and involve student representatives in meetings of the Faculty Learning and Teaching Committee where reports and responses must be formally discussed;
• Periodically monitor that intended actions are being progressed, including Faculty-wide matters;
• Programme Directors should ensure that progress towards the intended actions outlined in their response template is monitored through Boards of Studies meetings as part of the annual programme review process;
• Where collaborative programmes are involved, the Executive Dean is responsible for ensuring that the collaborative partner has also responded appropriately to issues raised and for including this information in the Faculty Response Form.

The role of Academic Quality Services

Academic Quality Services will:

• Read and review all External Examiners’ Reports and Faculty Responses;
• Create a summary report for each Faculty highlighting institutional issues, key actions and good practice.

If the response template is deemed to be incomplete or inadequate, Academic Quality Services may refer the response back to the Faculty for revision. If the enhanced response is still considered unsatisfactory, the PVC (Education) may undertake further investigation of the matter with the Executive Dean.

The Role of the Progression and Awards Board

The Progression and Awards Board will:

• Ensure that Faculties have considered the reports and have produced an acceptable and sufficiently detailed response and proposed actions to the External Examiner’s recommendations;
• Follow up with any inadequate responses;
• Identify examples of good practice;
• Highlight any issues that need to be addressed by the Faculty or to be referred to the Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee (i.e. issues that lie outside the immediate control of the Board);
• Monitor submission of External Examiner reports and Faculty responses;
• Produce a summary report outlining the Board’s review of key issues arising from External Examiners’ reports to the Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee.

The Role of the Learning, Teaching and Quality Committee

The Committee is responsible for:

• Undertaking the relevant quality control functions to ensure that the procedures for considering reports have been applied;
• Responding to institutional level issues that arise from the reports;
• Sharing areas of effective practice within the University.

Any information which identifies individual students in an External Examiner’s report will be redacted. Due to the volume of reports received and the instantaneous electronic availability of reports to Faculties, it is the responsibility of the Programme Director to review the External Examiner’s report and to advise staff in Academic Quality Services of any report in which a student is identified and where redaction is necessary. Reports requiring redaction must be identified as soon as possible, preferably within two weeks of their receipt by the University.

Student names/numbers will be blanked out in the redaction process. Only specified staff in Academic Quality Services are permitted to redact information in order to retain security of the system and the confidence of the External Examiners in providing a full report.

Once redacted, a version of the report suitable for circulation to student will be made available to the Faculty for internal scrutiny and response. This redacted version of the report will also be made available to the University’s quality committees for consideration.

Institutional issues would encompass comments made by the External Examiner that:

• There were serious concerns about the academic standards, content and structure of the programme;
• Standards of marking or moderation were poor;
• There were serious concerns about the integrity of the assessment process;
• Assessment regulations had been incorrectly and/or inconsistently applied.

When reports and responses have been scrutinised through the University’s quality assurance structures, Academic Quality Services provides to the External Examiner:

• A copy of their report;
• A copy of the Faculty response;
• Any additional specific comments made by the Progression and Awards Board;
• A copy of the Board’s summary report.

Action to be taken urgently

The PVC (Education) and the Director of Academic Services receive copies of the External Examiners’ reports and will ensure that action is taken quickly to address any urgent issues of concern.

The table below outlines the normal timescale of full consideration of External Examiner reports (assuming submission of the report by 31st July).

Programmes with Irregular Start/End Dates

For those programmes with irregular start/end dates in which the cohort does not ‘complete’ in June, External Examiners’ reports are received during the academic year. As a result, the specific deadlines outlined above are not relevant. However, the full process should normally be completed within five calendar months.