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The overall responsibility for the selection of potential external examiners lies with the Associate Dean (Education), who should liaise with heads of school and programme leaders to identify suitable candidates. New appointments are made before the start of the academic year. All external examiners for undergraduate and taught postgraduate programmes are appointed for four academic years starting on 1 October. Academic Quality Services will send regular updates to schools and departments detailing which appointments are due to expire and need to be replaced.

It is extremely important that all appointments are unreciprocated, impartial and made in strict accordance with the ºÚÁÏÉç's code of practice for external examining: taught programmes. Items 13-14 of the code of practice for external examining: taught programmes give the full eligibility criteria and restrictions for the appointment of external examiners.

Nomination Form for external examiner appointments (docx).

Section A of the Nomination Form should be completed and signed by the candidate. Section B should be completed by the programme team and signed by the relevant Associate Head of Education.

Completed forms are submitted to ExternalExaminers@surrey.ac.uk for processing, on behalf of the Pro-Vice-Chancellor, Academic. A bi-annual report on new external examiner appointments is submitted to the Senate Progression and Conferment Executive (SPACE) for subsequent endorsement, thus completing the approval process.

Human Resources will send official letters of appointment to external examiners at the start of their tenure, which define the terms and period of their employment. 

The external examiner’s module allocation and annual honorarium fee will be confirmed to them by ExternalExaminers@surrey.ac.uk.

Access to programme and module pages on is arranged by the Academic Administration team.

For information on the University’s expectation of the external examiner’s role and duties, please see the Code of Practice for External Examining: Taught Programmes.

Please review our most recent on ºÚÁÏÉçlearn, and the timeline overview (PDF) for external examiners.

Please also familiarize yourself with the A1: Regulations for Taught Programmes and the Code of Practice for Assessment and Feedback.

ºÚÁÏÉçLearn is the University’s virtual learning environment (VLE). It is a secure online environment which can be used in a wide variety of ways to enhance learning and teaching. Typically it is used to provide easy access to up to date and relevant learning materials, module and programme information and guidance, supplemented by activities such as discussion forums, quizzes or tests, and online assignments.

To improve the external examining process, external examiners are able to access all applicable assessments (coursework, exams, class tests, etc) and their feedback/grades via ºÚÁÏÉçLearn.

Please be aware that external examiner access to the online submissions in ºÚÁÏÉçLearn is not 100% read-only. There is a small risk of changing the grades, so please take care not to adjust any scores.

In order to access external examiner’s materials on ºÚÁÏÉçLearn, you must have an active ºÚÁÏÉç IT account. If you have lost access to your account, please contact ExternalExaminers@surrey.ac.uk.

After successfully logging in, please see the following  on how to navigate ºÚÁÏÉçLearn.

The Academic Administration team will assign you to the relevant Programme Information and Module pages on ºÚÁÏÉçlearn. If you do not have access to these when you log in, please contact AcademicAdministration@surrey.ac.uk.