Roles of External Examiners

1. The principal role of the external examiner is to monitor the academic standards of courses and the internal moderation and assessment processes and, in their judgement, to report on:
   1. whether the standards set for the course are appropriate for its awards, award elements or subjects, by reference to published national subject benchmarks, the national qualifications frameworks, institutional course specifications and other relevant information;
   2. the comparability of the standards with those of similar courses or parts of courses in other UK Higher Education institutions;
   3. the standards of student performance in the assessments for those courses or parts of courses which they have been appointed to examine;
   4. the extent to which the processes for assessment and the determination of awards are sound and have been fairly conducted;
   5. whether the action points in previous external examiner reports have been acted upon, and standards and quality thereby enhanced;
   6. strengths and distinctive innovative features in relation to academic standards, the operation of the assessment process and the quality of learning.
2. In order to perform these roles, the external examiner will be party to the internal moderation process, normally sampling work that contributes to the final award, through:
   1. consideration, as requested, of the form and content of the assessment tasks that are used to assess students;
   2. reviewing a sample of assessed work on site at NTU (the approximate size of the sample of assessed work to be reviewed by the external examiner should be agreed with them at the start of the course/module) - the university's moderation policy provides indicative sample sizes (see I of Section 15 of the ASQ Handbook)
      Guidance note
      From 2010-11 it is the University's policy that the review of samples of assessed work undertaken by external examiners should normally take place on site. This applies to all external examiner appointments made after September 2010. Transition arrangements for existing external examiner appointments can be negotiated and agreed at course level. The new policy seeks to mitigate the potential risk of assessment samples getting lost through the postal system, create some time saving benefits for local marking and moderation and strengthen networking opportunities between the course team and external examiners.
   3. occasionally, and at the request of the course leader or the Chair of Board of Examiners, advising internal assessors on cases where they cannot agree marks (but not to arbitrate on differences).