Examination

Grades are given by an examiner, in other words a teacher at a HEI who has been nominated for the examination. Students should be given grades for the courses they have completed, unless a HEI has decided otherwise.

You cannot appeal against a grade but you can ask for it to be reviewed. The examiner decides if a review is to be made.

There are no national regulations about how long marking can take. One starting point is the provision in the Administrative Procedure Act (1986:223) that issues are to be dealt with as rapidly as possible without jeopardising reliability. The Parliamentary Ombudsman has stated that an appropriate norm for marking examinations would be three weeks. This opinion related to a 5-credit course (7.5 higher education credits today). HEIs should issue guidelines about how long marking may take using the Parliamentary Ombudsman’s opinion as their starting point.

In principle there is no limit to the number of times a student may resit an examination or complete a placement period, if a HEI has not decided to restrict the number. A restriction of this kind has to be clearly stated in the course syllabus or some other official record of the HEI’s decision. The number of resits permitted in this case must be at least five, and the number of placement periods at least two.

The date of a resit should normally be announced by the date of the regular examination at the latest.

UKÄ considers that the period between notification of the results of an examination and the resit should be ten working days or at least two weeks.

The examiner is the one who sets the grade for a course. It should, however, be unusual for an examiner to demand very extensive changes in a dissertation or paper for it to be given a pass grade once a supervisor has said it may be presented. There are no rules about this, but explicit marking criteria and a sound dialogue between the supervisor and the examiner are measures that could enable avoidance of situations of this kind. The HEIs usually try to prevent this problem from arising.

Students have not been given any right to take examinations outside their HEIs but on the basis of the services that public authorities are required to provide according to Section 4 of the Administrative Procedure Act, there could be grounds for HEIs to offer this possibility. If a HEI does offer the possibility, it is not allowed to charge a fee for students to be able to take examinations at some other place.