Appealing an RCEM exam result
TL;DR. You can appeal an RCEM exam result on exactly two grounds: procedural irregularity (something went wrong with the way the exam was delivered) or exceptional circumstances that affected your performance. “I disagree with the marking”, “I thought my answers were better than that”, or “I just missed it” are not grounds and will be thrown out at the first stage. You have 20 working days from results release, the fee is £250 (refunded only if you win), and most appeals are rejected. Even a successful procedural appeal usually gets you a fee refund or a discounted attempt — a fail-to-pass conversion is reserved for borderline fails within one Standard Error of Measurement of the pass mark. Read this before you click submit.
extenuating circumstances?
plan a resit instead
within stated window
Authoritative sources
- RCEM — Appeals and misconduct policy
- RCEM — Exam regulations
- RCEM — Results, feedback and awarding
- GMC — General Medical Council
Facts last verified against the RCEM Appeals Procedure for MRCEM and FRCEM Exams (v1.4, December 2023) and the rcem.ac.uk Appeals & Misconduct page.
Should I even be appealing?
Before anything else: the appeals process is not a remarking service. It is not a second opinion on whether the examiners were generous. RCEM is explicit — you cannot appeal because you think you were under-marked, because you want to challenge the academic judgement of the examiners, or because you weren’t aware of the regulations. Those routes are closed.
What the process is designed to catch is the situation where the exam machinery failed you in a way you can evidence: the Pearson VUE workstation crashed for 40 minutes, the OSCE station ran short, the proctor walked in and out of frame repeatedly, your reasonable adjustment wasn’t actually delivered, or you were genuinely incapacitated on the day by something outside your control. If that sounds like your day, keep reading. If it doesn’t — if you’re upset and looking for any door to push on — the honest answer is to put the £250 toward a question bank and your next sitting.
What are the actual grounds for appeal?
There are two, and only two:
- Procedural irregularity in the conduct of the exam (including administrative error) that adversely affected your performance.
- Exceptional circumstances that adversely affected your performance.
That phrase “adversely affected your performance” is doing a lot of work. The Chief Examiner, who screens every appeal at the first gate, is looking for a credible causal link between the thing that went wrong and your result. A 5-minute proctor intervention in an SBA where you finished with time to spare is procedurally noted but unlikely to be deemed to have affected you. A 30-minute mid-paper outage where you were dumped back into the test with the clock not paused is a different story.
Valid vs invalid grounds: what actually flies?
Use this as a sanity check before you draft anything.
| Your situation | Ground? | Next step |
|---|---|---|
| Pearson VUE platform crashed mid-paper; time was not properly restored | Valid — procedural irregularity | Gather the incident reference, screenshots, support chat logs; appeal |
| OSCE station ran short or instructions were given incorrectly by the examiner | Valid — procedural irregularity | Note station, time, examiner if known; appeal |
| Approved reasonable adjustment (extra time, separate room) was not delivered on the day | Valid — procedural irregularity | Reference the original adjustment approval email; appeal |
| You were ill on the day with documented medical evidence and notified RCEM within ten working days | Valid — exceptional circumstances | Submit medical documentation to the Head of Exams; appeal |
| Bereavement or acute family crisis on or just before exam day, with evidence | Valid — exceptional circumstances | Notify Head of Exams as early as possible, then appeal with evidence |
| Noisy test centre, but you finished the paper in time | Weak — hard to evidence adverse effect | Only worth appealing if you have an incident report and a borderline fail |
| You felt the OSCE actor was “off” or unhelpful | Invalid — academic / professional judgement | Don’t waste the £250 |
| You disagree with the pass mark or think the paper was unfair to overseas candidates | Invalid — challenges the standard-setting | Don’t waste the £250 |
| You missed the pass mark by one mark and want it rounded up | Invalid on its own | Only relevant if you also have a procedural ground |
| You didn’t read the regulations and broke a rule | Invalid — explicitly excluded | Don’t appeal |
| You were unwell but didn’t tell anyone, sat the exam, and now feel you shouldn’t have | Very weak | RCEM says candidates presenting for an exam are deemed fit; late declarations are difficult |
What outcomes can I actually ask for?
You don’t get to pick from a menu of remedies after the fact — you state your requested outcome in the appeal itself. The three available outcomes are:
- A full or partial refund of the exam fee. Available on either ground. This is the most common successful outcome.
- The exam attempt discounted from your exam history. Useful if you’re approaching the maximum number of permitted attempts.
- The result amended from a fail to a pass. This is the rare one. It is only available where (a) you appealed on procedural irregularity grounds, and (b) you were a borderline fail — defined as within one Standard Error of Measurement of the pass mark.
If you weren’t borderline, no amount of procedural failure will convert your fail into a pass. The most you can hope for is a refund and/or a discounted attempt. Be realistic about which of those you’re actually chasing before you write a thousand words.
How realistic is success?
RCEM doesn’t publish appeal success rates, so anyone giving you a precise percentage is guessing. What we do know:
- The Chief Examiner screens every appeal at the gate. Appeals that don’t fall within the two permitted grounds are rejected at that stage, and the £250 is not refunded.
- Of the appeals that pass the gate, an Appeals Panel reviews on the evidence. The bar is causal: did the irregularity affect this candidate’s performance?
- Where there has been a substantial procedural problem affecting many candidates, RCEM has the power to apply pre-emptive outcomes (refunds, discounted attempts) without individual appeals — so by the time you’re appealing alone, the easy systemic cases have usually already been handled.
Working assumption: most individual appeals fail. The ones that succeed tend to have hard documentary evidence (incident reference numbers, Pearson VUE chat logs, contemporaneous medical certificates) and a clear causal story. If you don’t have those, your odds are poor.
What’s the step-by-step process?
- Day 0 — Results release. Your 20 working day appeal window opens.
- Decide your ground and gather evidence. Procedural? Get the incident reference from Pearson VUE or the OSCE delivery partner, screenshots, timestamps, witness names. Exceptional circumstances? Get medical documentation, ideally contemporaneous — not a sick note written three weeks later.
- Draft your submission. State the ground, state the facts, state the causal link to your performance, state the outcome you’re requesting (refund, discounted attempt, or — if borderline and procedural — fail-to-pass).
- Submit the online appeals form on the RCEM Appeals & Misconduct page within 20 working days. Email supporting evidence separately to
exampolicy@rcem.ac.uk. - Pay the £250 fee within 3 working days of receiving payment details, by BACS. No fee, no appeal.
- Preliminary review by the Chief Examiner. They decide whether the appeal falls within permitted grounds. If not, it’s rejected here and the fee is forfeited.
- Appeals Panel. If the appeal passes the gate, it goes to a panel — Chief Examiner (chair), a Lead Examiner or College Officer, an active Examiner, and a Lay Advisory Group member. Panels typically meet monthly. You can attend (and bring one supporter) but don’t have to.
- Decision within ten working days of the panel meeting. The panel’s decision is final. There is no further appeal route to RCEM.
What evidence actually helps?
The single biggest predictor of whether an appeal goes anywhere is the quality of contemporaneous evidence. In order of usefulness:
- Incident reference numbers raised on the day by the test centre, proctor, or OSCE invigilator. If something went wrong, ask for it to be logged before you leave.
- Pearson VUE / OnVUE chat logs and support tickets from the actual session, with timestamps.
- Screenshots or photographs taken at the time (where permitted) showing error messages, frozen screens, blocked rooms.
- Independent witness statements from fellow candidates who experienced the same disruption — dated and signed.
- Contemporaneous medical evidence — GP, ED attendance, A&E discharge summary, fit note dated on or immediately around the exam.
- Your own written timeline produced the same day, while detail is fresh.
Evidence produced weeks later, after the result, is significantly weaker. If something goes wrong on exam day, behave on the day as though you might need to appeal — even if you think you’ve nailed it.
What if I was ill on the day?
RCEM’s position is that candidates presenting for an exam are deemed fit and healthy to sit it. If you become unwell during the exam, the policy is clear: tell the Senior Invigilator immediately and submit supporting medical documentation to the Head of Exams within ten working days. If you knew you were unwell before the exam, you should notify the Head of Exams in advance — or, if not possible, within three working days of the exam date.
The reason this matters: a late illness claim, with no contemporaneous notification and no day-of medical evidence, will struggle. The College’s view is that you had the option to withdraw and chose to sit. That doesn’t automatically kill an exceptional-circumstances appeal, but it raises the evidentiary bar considerably.
Should I re-sit while my appeal is pending?
That’s your call. RCEM does not pause the exam calendar for you and explicitly cannot guarantee an appeal outcome before the next sitting. Two things to know:
- You can re-sit while your appeal is in progress under the normal application route.
- If you sit and pass before the appeal is determined, the appeal is automatically terminated. Your £250 is gone. The original fail will, however, still sit on your record unless your appeal would have removed it.
For most candidates within a training programme, the pragmatic move is to book the next sitting and treat the appeal as a parallel process aimed at a fee refund or a discounted attempt — not as a way to skip the next exam.
Frequently asked questions
Can I appeal the pass mark itself?
No. The pass mark is set by RCEM’s standard-setting process (Angoff for SBAs with one Standard Error of Measurement added; Borderline Regression for OSCEs). Disagreement with the pass mark is, by definition, a challenge to academic judgement — explicitly excluded as grounds for appeal.
Do I get the £250 fee back if I win?
Yes. The fee is refunded in full if the appeal is upheld (fully or partially). If the appeal is rejected at the Chief Examiner’s preliminary screen or at the Appeals Panel, the fee is forfeited.
How long does the whole process take?
Variable. Appeals panels meet roughly monthly, so from submission to decision you should plan for 6–12 weeks. The panel itself communicates its outcome within ten working days of meeting. If you need a fast answer in time for your next sitting, you may not get one.
Can I appeal an OSCE result?
Yes, on the same two grounds. OSCEs are marked by domain marking with the pass mark set by Borderline Regression. Appeals based on “the actor was difficult” or “the examiner didn’t seem to like me” challenge academic judgement and won’t pass the gate. Appeals based on a station running short, instructions being given incorrectly, or a reasonable adjustment not being delivered are procedural and can.
Can I get my exam attempt wiped if I withdraw mid-exam?
Not automatically. If you become unwell during the exam and follow the policy (notify the Senior Invigilator on the day, submit medical evidence to the Head of Exams within ten working days), you can request that the attempt be discounted via the appeals route on exceptional circumstances grounds. Walking out without notifying anyone makes this much harder.
Can someone come with me to the Appeals Panel?
Yes. You can bring one supporting attendee, who must be identified at least ten working days in advance. They can advise and support you but cannot address the panel or take part in proceedings. Choose someone calm and organised, not someone who will argue on your behalf.
Is the panel’s decision really final?
Within RCEM, yes. There is no second internal appeal. Beyond RCEM, candidates occasionally pursue external routes (judicial review, ombudsman, regulatory complaint) but these are slow, expensive, narrow in scope, and not a route the College’s process contemplates. For practical purposes, plan as if the panel decision is the end of the road.
What if RCEM messed up the exam for lots of people, not just me?
Where the College identifies a substantial procedural irregularity affecting an exam sitting as a whole, the Head of Exams can apply pre-emptive outcomes — typically fee refunds and/or discounted attempts — to affected candidates without requiring individual appeals. This is communicated within ten working days of results release. If you want any additional outcome (e.g. fail-to-pass for a borderline) you still need to lodge your own appeal.
What if I get a procedural fail flagged for misconduct rather than a performance fail?
That’s a different process — the Misconduct Policy, not the Appeals Procedure. Misconduct findings have their own appeal route with a higher fee (£1,250 at time of writing) and narrower grounds (procedural irregularity in the investigation, or new evidence). If you’ve received a misconduct allegation, read the Candidate Code of Conduct and Misconduct Policy before doing anything else and consider getting advice from your defence union.
Will appealing damage my future relationship with the College or my training?
RCEM’s policy states explicitly that candidates who make a complaint or appeal in good faith will not be disadvantaged in current or future exams. Appeals are anonymised at the preliminary stage (your identity is only revealed if you elect to attend the panel). In practice: a well-founded, professionally written appeal won’t hurt you. A pattern of unfounded appeals, or anything that strays into misconduct territory, is a different conversation.
What if I miss the 20 working day window?
You’re out of time. The window runs from the publication of your results on the College website. Late submissions are not generally accepted. If you’ve just received your result and you’re reading this, count the working days now and put the deadline in your diary.
The honest bottom line
Most candidates who appeal an RCEM exam result lose. The process exists for genuine procedural failures and genuine exceptional circumstances — not for the universal experience of failing a hard exam and feeling, on reflection, that you deserved better. If you have hard evidence of something concrete that went wrong on the day, and a credible causal story linking it to your performance, an appeal is reasonable. If you don’t, that £250 and the weeks of mental energy are almost certainly better spent on preparation for the next sitting.
Either way: gather evidence on the day, log incidents while you’re still in the room, and don’t make the decision to appeal in the first 24 hours after a fail — give yourself a week to assess it cold.
Next step: Whether you’re appealing or preparing to re-sit, start with the EM Final Exams revision platform to make the next attempt your last.
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