Roles and responsibilities

The External Examiner Role

External Examiners assist the university in maintaining the academic standards of its awards and provide essential feedback on whether:

1. the university is maintaining the threshold academic standards set for its awards;
2. the assessment process measures student achievement rigorously and fairly against intended outcomes;
3. the academic standards and the achievements of students are comparable with those in other UK degree-awarding bodies.

Roles and Responsibilities

External Examiners will be appointed to one or more of the following roles:

Module Examiners

• Maintain oversight and comment on the academic standards of the modules to which you are appointed.
• Judge the overall standard of student performance.
• Comment on the content and form of examination papers and course work.
• Scrutinise a sample of examination scripts and summative coursework.
• Monitor arrangements for live assessments.
• Comment on and approve changes to existing modules and design of new modules.

Award Examiners

• Maintain oversight and comment on the academic standards of the awards to which you are appointed.
• Judge the overall standard of student performance.
• Attend Award Boards.
• Provide feedback on examples of good practice and innovation and make recommendations to enhance the quality of learning opportunities provided to students.
• Comment on and approve changes to award structures.

External Assessors

• Review documentation relating to the EPA, including the EPA assessment instruments/materials and internal quality assurance documentation to ensure the EPA meets the standards set within the EPA plan.
• Review a sample of EPA assessed work, including observing live assessments.
• Observe assessor standardisation or moderation meetings, to ensure the assessment process measures student achievement rigorously and fairly against the intended outcomes of the EPA plan and is conducted in line with the relevant policies and regulations.
• Meet with independent assessors and other EPAO staff.
• Meet with apprentices and, where possible, employers.
• Observe the meeting at which the final decision on the EPA is confirmed (such as the Award Board).
• Identify any issues or activities within the context of the delivery of EPA that do not meet with the requirements of the Standard or pose a risk to effective EPA delivery and/or the achievement of occupational competence.
• Provide informative comment and recommendations on any good practice and innovation relating to learning, teaching and assessment.

Apprenticeship provision

• Award external examiners will be appointed to the academic and practice-based elements of higher and degree apprenticeships and will undertake the full duties of an award examiner for this provision.
• The award external examiner will normally be appointed as the module external examiner for an integrated apprenticeship end point assessment and will monitor the completion of these assessments.
• Where an apprenticeship does not an include an academic award of Staffordshire University an Award examiner will still be appointed to oversee the apprenticeship as a whole.

All Examiners

All examiners produce an annual report, and those undertaking the External Assessor role will also produce a separate report for this. 

Experienced External Examiners may be asked to mentor a new Examiner for the first year of their tenure.

Examiners may report to the Deputy Vice Chancellor or Vice Chancellor on any serious matters of concern.

External Examiner Tenures

External Examiners are appointed for four academic years.  This may under exceptional circumstances be extended to a fifth year.

External Examiners who wish to end their tenure early are asked to submit this in writing to academicquality@staffs.ac.uk giving three months’ notice.

External Examiner/Assessor Annual Reports

External Examiner/Assessor reports are submitted annually using the University template. 

They should not reference staff or student names.

They should identify clearly where comments relate to specific partners/sites or modules/courses.

They should provide as much detail as possible.

Previous Examiner Annual Reports can be provided on request to academicquality@staffs.ac.uk

Fees and Expenses

Fee and Expense Claim Forms are submitted to the Academic Quality Service (AQS) at academicquality@staffs.ac.uk

Fees are paid on receipt of the completed annual reports. Expenses can be submitted at any time.