Nicola Claydon – Customer Support Manager for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and the London Boroughs of Barnet, Enfield, Haringey, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Redbridge and Waltham Forest

In this blog, you’ll find practical guidance for managing Cambridge Nationals results on results days, including what to check if any results are missing or incomplete. 

How Cambridge Nationals work 

Cambridge Nationals are unitised qualifications. This means students can take units throughout the course but must take the exam at the end to meet the terminal assessment rule.

You can read more information on the terminal assessment rule in our guidance and FAQs.

Certification entries (‘cash-in’)

For Cambridge Nationals, you need to make a certification entry (‘cash-in’) to pull together all of the unit results into an overall subject grade at the end of the course. The certification entry acts as a term-time checkpoint and lets us know that the student needs an overall qualification result in that series to be able to progress.

If your students are expecting a result this summer and you did not make certification entries with your June 2026 unit entries, you should do this now.

Certification entries are always free and there are no late fees for making certification entries now.

How are Cambridge Nationals results graded? 

Units and qualifications are graded as follows:

• Pass, Merit, Distinction, Distinction* at Level 2
• Pass, Merit, Distinction at Level 1

The difficulty of unitised qualification exam papers may vary from year to year, so to ensure fairness and consistency across years and within subjects, the raw exam marks are converted into a common scale. This scale is known as the uniform mark scale/score (UMS). It gives a fixed scale with common boundaries that are unchanged year on year and is used to make the marks compatible and comparable.

You can view the UMS grade boundaries on our grade boundaries page.

The overall grade for Cambridge Nationals will be determined by adding together the uniform marks (UMS) for each unit and then awarding the overall grade based on the standard qualification grade boundaries.

To find out more about how unitised grades are calculated, see the results pages of our website and you can use our online tool to convert raw scores to UMS. 

How and when we issue results 

As for GCSEs, Cambridge Nationals results are embargoed until the official result release date.

For the June 2026 series, the results days are as follows:

• Restricted results release: 12.01am on 19 August 2026
• Candidate results day: from 8am on 20 August 2026

Please see the JCQ release of results guidance for further details, as this lets you know who’s allowed access to what and when.

Remember to stay alert to phishing attacks and scam attempts throughout the results period!

EDI results files via A2C 

You will receive up to two EDI result files on restricted results day:

• one containing unit marks and grades
• one containing a qualification marks and grades (any GCSE results will also be in this file). 

We’ll then provide refreshed EDI results files on a weekly basis via Interchange. These will be available each Monday until the end of the post-results period. To access these files, log in to Interchange, hover over ‘Results’ in the left-hand menu and then click on ‘XML/EDI results’. 

But remember, if you want to use these files, please be aware that they’ll overwrite any manual changes you’ve made to your system.

Accessing Interchange

Before the results period begins, make sure you can access Interchange successfully. You log in via our single sign-on service, My Cambridge. 

We use two-factor authentication (2FA) for Interchange. If you’ve not already set up this up, see the instructions on our website and short video.

If you've changed your phone or tablet, you'll need to pair your new device with your My Cambridge account – see our FAQ.

Interchange results reports 

As well as the results data, there are a range of results reports available for you to download via Interchange from 12.01am on restricted results day.

To access these reports, log in to Interchange, hover over ‘Results’ and select ‘Results documents’. 

In addition to the statement of marks (results slip) and results and grade boundaries report, there are a couple of reports you may find useful.

For example, for each candidate the cumulative specification results report (PDF) shows their qualification grade, total uniform mark, all unit results from all series and an indicator to show which units were used towards the qualification grade.

If you need to respond quickly to any special consideration queries, or for your own internal checks, you can generate the special consideration report (CSV). It shows where special consideration has been applied, including the tariff and marks awarded, and highlights results that have been calculated due to absence. There’s no need for you to share this information with your students.

You can view examples and more details about all the results reports on our website.

Missing or incomplete results 

It’s not unusual for there to be queries on results day, so if you have any results that are missing or do not look right, it’s a good idea to work through these checks to help you identify the issue and take the next steps:

• Check whether you still need to make a certification entry. You can make a late certification request via Interchange up to the closing date for this service (24 September 2026). 
• Check your students have been entered for the correct combination of units and have met the terminal assessment requirement for the exam unit. You can find more details on the entries rules page of our website. 
• If you still have missing results, submit a missing or incomplete results (MIR) request via Interchange. Log into Interchange and hover over ‘Post-results’ in the left-hand menu. Click on ‘Missing and incomplete results’ and follow the on-screen instructions. This service is free of charge.
• If a candidate grade is showing as ‘Q’, this means a result is pending or is currently unavailable. In each instance, we should have contacted your centre in advance to explain why. If you have not received any communication from us, please speak with your Head of Centre who will have more information about the issue. 

If you encounter any of these issues or have any further questions, please contact us on 01223 553998. On the restricted release and candidate results days, our Customer Support Centre lines will be open between 7.30am and 5pm.

We hope the results days run smoothly for you, your colleagues and your students. 

For full guidance on managing Cambridge Nationals results you can also refer to our website.

About the author

Nicola started her career in education back in 2005 and has worked in various roles within colleges until she joined Cambridge OCR in 2010. Nicola worked in the Operations Department before becoming a Customer Support Manager in 2014. Her experience in these roles has provided her with the knowledge to help support centres with the administration of Cambridge OCR qualifications.