The appointment of external examiners
External examiner appointments must be approved on behalf of the Academic Board by the External Examiners' Sub-Committee of Quality Standards Committee on the recommendation of the relevant school Quality Standing Committee. All nominations are scrutinised against clearly specified criteria agreed by Academic Board.
New examiners should take up their appointments on or before the retirement of their predecessors. External examiners should remain available after the last assessments with which they are to be associated in order to deal with any subsequent reviews of decisions.
Normally, appointments will run from October to September. The duration of an external examiner's appointment will normally be for four years. Only in exceptional circumstances, where there is a need for continuity, will an extension of up to one year be considered.
External examiners normally hold no more than two external examiner appointments for taught programmes/modules at any point in time. The Sub-Committee will expect to see convincing arguments in support to proposals for a heavier workload for an examiner.
In order to protect their independence, external examiners should not concurrently act as consultants to a Programme team on Programme design, or be members of a panel established to review the field they examine.
In approving the appointment of external examiners, the Sub-Committee will be seeking to ensure that the external examiners will be competent and impartial, and that the Assessment Board as a whole maintains an appropriate balance and diversity in order to ensure that students are fairly assessed.
New external examiners must be briefed on their task as soon as possible after appointment, preferably by visiting the institution to meet staff. The briefing will cover: the dates of examiners' meetings; the examiner's role in relation to the examining team as a whole; module specifications and teaching methods; the methods of assessment and marking scheme; modular regulations.
The amount of the fee payable to an external examiner is at the discretion of the school, but should take into account the current guidelines laid down by the University.
If termination of the appointment of an external examiner is considered desirable, the consent of the Academic Board will be sought.
