Enquiries About Results: How to Challenge a Cambridge International Grade

You opened your results, and one grade looks wrong. Here is the short version of what you can actually do about it.

You cannot submit an enquiry about results yourself. Cambridge International only accepts enquiries from your school or exam centre, backed by the Head of Centre — never from candidates or parents. That rule has no exceptions: even private candidates go through the centre that entered them. The deadline for the June 2026 series is 20 September 2026, and because the request has to move through your school first, your real deadline is whatever internal cut-off your exams officer sets before that.

So this page has one practical job: to tell you exactly what the services are, what can and cannot happen to your grade, and what to say to your exams officer this week.

What the Services Actually Are

Cambridge's post-results services have official names and numbers, and it helps to use them when you talk to your school. In plain English:

• Clerical re-check (Service 1, or 1S with a copy of your script). Cambridge checks that every page of your script was marked and that the marks were added up and recorded correctly. Nobody re-reads your answers — this catches arithmetic and administrative slips only.
• Review of marking (Service 2, or 2S with a copy of your script). An examiner reviews the original marking to check the mark scheme was applied correctly. This is the service most people mean by a "remark". It is not available for multiple-choice papers — those are machine-marked, so there is no marking judgement to review.
• Re-moderation (Service 5). For components your school assessed and Cambridge moderated. It re-moderates the centre's marking as a whole and is not available for individual candidates.
• Group report (Service 9). A report on the work of a group of candidates. Useful for teachers, but Cambridge is explicit that it cannot be used to decide about retake entries — do not wait on one.

Separately, there is Access to Scripts — a free service through which your school can download your marked script. It is not an enquiry and changes nothing on its own, but it is the cheapest possible first step: seeing where the marks were actually lost tells you whether a review of marking is worth requesting. For the June 2026 series the download window closes on 4 October 2026.

Can Your Grade Go Down?

This is the question that stops most students from asking for a review, so it deserves a precise answer rather than folklore.

Your syllabus grade — the letter on your statement of results — is protected. The Cambridge Handbook 2026 (section 6.3.4) puts it in one sentence: if an enquiry changes a candidate's mark for a component, "their syllabus grade will either stay the same or go up".

Two things underneath that grade are not protected:

• The component mark can go up or down. A review really can find marks that were too generous as well as marks that were missed.
• The percentage uniform mark can go up or down. If you are close to a boundary that matters to you — or to a university — a lower percentage uniform mark is a real outcome, even while the grade itself holds.

And there is one consequence that matters enormously if you are also weighing a retake. The Handbook (section 6.3.4) is explicit that if an enquiry lowers a mark and that mark is later carried forward to another exam series, Cambridge uses the reduced mark when calculating your grade in that series. In other words: the grade you already have is safe, but a lowered component mark follows you into any future series that reuses it. If your retake plan involves carrying marks forward, factor this in before you enquire.

One last thing to weigh before submitting: once an enquiry is complete, Cambridge cannot cancel the changes to the result — there is no undo if a mark comes down.

What It Costs

Cambridge does not publish enquiry fees. The fees list lives in the "My Messages" section of Direct — the platform only schools can log into — and Cambridge invoices the Head of Centre, not you. Your school then decides what, if anything, it passes on to you.

Two consequences follow. First, anyone quoting you a universal price for a "Cambridge remark" is guessing — the only numbers that matter are the ones your own exams officer gives you. Second, the refund rule is narrower than most students assume: the fee is waived only if your syllabus grade changes. If the review moves your mark but the grade stays the same, the fee stands.

Timing: the Dates That Matter

• 20 September 2026 — the deadline for all enquiries about results on the June 2026 series. Cambridge cannot accept anything after this.
• Within 24 hours of acknowledgement — the only window in which an enquiry can be amended or cancelled. Decide before you submit, not after.
• 4 October 2026 — the last day to download scripts through Access to Scripts.

If you sit at a centre in the UK, priority review services with an earlier deadline of 23 August 2026 also exist — ask your exams officer whether they apply to you.

One warning that Cambridge itself makes (Handbook, section 6.3.3): the outcome is normally issued within 30 days of the enquiry being received, and if you want to retake in the next exam series, the outcome may not arrive in time to inform that decision. For June 2026 the squeeze is unusually tight: retake entries for the international November 2026 series are accepted without late fees until 21 September 2026 — one day after the enquiries deadline. An enquiry submitted close to 20 September will therefore normally return its outcome around a month after the retake decision has already had to be made. So if you want the outcome in hand before committing to or ruling out a November retake, your centre needs to submit the enquiry well before the deadline — as a rough guide, by around late August. That is not a Cambridge deadline, just arithmetic on the published dates; the two official deadlines remain 20 and 21 September.

What to Say to Your Exams Officer

Since the enquiry must go through your school, your job is to make their job easy. When you speak to your exams officer — ideally in the first days after results, not mid-September — bring answers to these:

1. Which syllabus, and which component. Enquiries are made at component level. "My Physics grade seems low" is a conversation; "please review Paper 4" is a request.
2. Which service you are asking for. A clerical re-check (Service 1) if you suspect an adding-up error; a review of marking (Service 2) if you believe the mark scheme was misapplied — and remember Service 2 does not exist for multiple-choice papers.
3. Whether you want the script copy. Services 1S and 2S include one. Alternatively, ask whether the school will pull your script through the free Access to Scripts service first, before committing to a paid enquiry.
4. What it will cost you. Cambridge invoices the school; the school sets what you pay. Ask directly, and ask what happens to that charge if the grade changes.
5. Their internal deadline. The Cambridge deadline is 20 September 2026; your school will need your request, and possibly your consent form and payment, well before that.

If you are a private candidate, the same conversation happens with the centre that entered you — Cambridge treats that centre as your school for everything on this page.

What Happens if Your Grade Changes

If an enquiry raises your syllabus grade, Cambridge writes to the school straight away, issues a revised statement of results, and — for Level 3 qualifications such as A Levels — notifies UCAS directly. Certificates are held back for any candidate whose enquiry is still open, so a pending outcome does not produce a certificate with the old grade on it.

There is one more provision worth knowing if you have hedged your bets: if your grade goes up after you have already been entered for a retake, Cambridge credits the retake entry fee when you withdraw. Enquiring and entering a retake at the same time is not a wasted double-spend if the enquiry succeeds.

If You Disagree with the Outcome: Appeals

An enquiry outcome is not necessarily the end. Cambridge runs a two-stage appeals process — Stage 1 within 28 days of the outcome, then Stage 2, heard by an independent panel, within 14 days of the Stage 1 decision. Like the enquiry itself, appeals are submitted by your centre, not by you.

But go in with clear eyes about the grounds. Appeals exist for procedural failures — where Cambridge did not follow its own published processes — not for disagreements with an examiner's judgement. The Handbook (section 7.2.1.2) says it plainly: "The appeals process is not a way to get another opinion about the candidate's or candidates' work."

For the full regulations, the primary source is the Cambridge Handbook 2026 — sections 6.3 (enquiries about results) and 7 (appeals). Everything on this page is drawn from it and from Cambridge's published key dates for the June 2026 series; where your school's information differs on internal deadlines or charges, your school's version wins, because they are the ones submitting.