Institutions employ external examiners in a range of roles. Besides the primary role in the assurance of the professional standards of their programmes, institutions may ask external examiners to undertake additional roles. It is important that any additional role should not conflict with or compromise the primary role. Institutions should state clearly and communicate to all concerned the various roles; powers and responsibilities assigned to the UK-CCL external examiners. By providing clear guidance on the role and authority of different types of examiners within their assessment systems, institutions will help all parties concerned with the assessment processes, including students, examiners, academic departments/schools, and individual academic staff.

A clear understanding by external examiners of the ways in which their work underpins the institution’s quality assurance processes will help them to fulfil their role effectively. Institutions will have their own procedures to enable external examiners to endorse assessment outcomes. They normally provide specific guidance both on the significance of external examiners’ signatures on documents recording the final decisions of examination boards and on the arrangements for resolving a situation where an external examiner is unwilling to endorse the outcomes of the assessment processes. This is important if misunderstandings are to be prevented and confusion avoided. It is also helpful to make explicit the extent to which the decision of an examination/assessment board, endorsed by an external examiner, limits any further consideration of the marks or awards at any subsequent stage of the examination process and/or is taken to indicate that processes have been carried out in accordance with the policy and regulations of the institution.