Can your grade go down after a remark? The risks explained

It's the question that stops most people from asking for a remark in the first place: can the grade actually go down? The short answer is yes, it can. The longer answer is that this is technically true and almost never the thing that happens in practice. This piece walks through the official rule, what the latest Ofqual data shows, why a grade can move down at all, and how to think about the risk before you sign the consent form.

Exam boards in England, Wales and Northern Ireland follow a shared post-results framework set by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ). When you ask for a review of marking (the formal name for a remark, sometimes called Service 2), the rule is explicit. The Post-Results Services booklet says the final mark and grade after a review "may be lower than, higher than, or the same as the result which was originally issued."

That's the line every exams officer has to read out, and it's why schools ask you to sign a consent form before they submit. You're agreeing in writing that you understand all three outcomes are possible. In plain terms: you can't pick the review and then opt out if it goes the wrong way. Whatever the senior examiner finds becomes your new mark.

This is where the data gets reassuring. Ofqual publishes a yearly report on reviews of marking, and the summer 2025 numbers are about as clear as it gets.

Of all GCSE grades that were challenged in summer 2025, 24.1% were changed up and less than 0.1% were changed down. So out of every thousand GCSE grades that students asked to be reviewed, around 241 went up and fewer than 1 went down. A-Levels (and AS levels) follow the same pattern: according to Ofqual, around 24.0% of challenged A-level grades went up and less than 0.1% went down.

For the bigger picture, 4.3% of all GCSE grades awarded in summer 2025 were challenged, and 1.0% of all grades ended up being changed. So the vast majority of reviews don't move the grade at all, and the small slice that do move it almost always move it upwards.

A useful way to read that bottom row: A grade dropping after review is rare enough that Ofqual reports it as "less than 0.1%" rather than a precise number. It happens, it's just not the typical story.

If reviewers are supposed to fix marking errors, why would a grade ever drop? Because a review of marking isn't a re-mark of the bits you didn't like. The senior examiner looks at the whole paper for marking errors in either direction. If your original marker was generous on a question (gave you a mark you didn't quite earn under the mark scheme), the reviewer is required to correct that too.

Here's a worked example. Imagine you sat a paper out of 100 and got 62, which put you one mark below a grade 7 boundary at 63. You ask for a review because you think question 5 was harshly marked. The senior examiner agrees and adds 2 marks to question 5. But they also notice that question 9 had been generously credited and remove 1 mark there. Your new total is 63, which is exactly on the grade 7 boundary, so your grade goes up. Now imagine the reverse: they only find the error on question 9, take 1 mark off, and you end up at 61. Same review, very different result.

That's the mechanism. Reviewers aren't out to catch you, but they aren't allowed to ignore errors that went your way either.

The risk is real but small. The upside depends entirely on how close you are to a grade boundary and how plausible it is that something was mismarked. A few honest questions to run through:

How close are you to the next grade up? Boundaries are published on each board's website on results day. If you're one to three marks below the boundary, a review has a clear target. If you're eight or ten marks below, a review is unlikely to move you, and you'd be paying for very little chance of upside while still carrying the (tiny) downside risk.

Does the grade match what you and your teachers expected? If you've been getting 7s in mocks and you've landed a 5 in the real thing, something might be off and a review is more likely to find it. If the grade is roughly where you'd been tracking, a reviewer is probably going to confirm the original mark.

Does the grade matter to your next step? If a sixth form, college, apprenticeship or university place hinges on getting the next grade up, a review starts to look worth it even at standard odds. If the grade doesn't change anything you're doing next, the maths is different.

If you're one or two marks off a boundary that matters for your next step, the numbers say a review is usually worth asking for. If you're nowhere near a boundary, or the grade doesn't unlock anything, the case is weaker. The downside (a fraction of 1% chance of going down) shouldn't be the thing that stops you, but the upside has to be worth the fee and the wait too.

One more practical point. Once you sign the consent form, you can't pull the review back if you change your mind halfway. The board returns whatever the senior examiner finds. So it's worth having one calm conversation with the exams officer at your school before you submit, especially if your grade is sitting right on a boundary and you're not sure which side you'd rather end up on.