Predicted Grades for International Private Candidates: A CAIE Guide (2026/27)
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
If you are studying Cambridge International A-Levels outside a school that teaches them, you have probably already run into the same wall: UCAS expects predicted grades, and nobody around you can give them. CAIE predicted grades have to come from somewhere, and your school is not in a position to supply them.
Your school may be excellent. It may simply teach a different curriculum. If your teachers do not teach, set or mark your A-Level subjects, they cannot honestly predict your A-Level grades and a reference written by someone with no sight of your A-Level work does you no favours in a competitive admissions round.
This guide explains how international private candidates get predicted grades and a UCAS reference, what evidence counts, and how the timings work when you are applying from overseas.
Educo London is a UCAS-registered centre (centre number 21393). We assess and submit for private candidates, including candidates based outside the UK.
Who this guide is for
You are likely in one of these situations:
You attend a school abroad that follows a national curriculum — Korean, Japanese, Indian, Nigerian, Emirati, American — and are studying CAIE A-Levels separately, on top of or instead of your school subjects.
You are working with a private tutor, online or in person, who teaches you the A-Level syllabus but has no UCAS centre and cannot submit anything on your behalf.
You are self-studying entirely and entering as a private candidate at a local exam centre.
You are home-educated overseas.
In all four cases the qualification is fine. The gap is not academic. It is administrative: there is no centre attached to you, and UCAS is built around centres.
Why your school cannot simply write the prediction
Schools are usually willing. The problem is that a predicted grade is meant to be a professional judgement about how you will perform in a specific examination, against that examination's standards.
A teacher who has never taught 9709 Pure Mathematics 3, has not marked your work against the Cambridge mark scheme, and does not know where the grade thresholds have historically fallen, cannot make that judgement. If they do it anyway, the prediction is a guess and admissions teams at selective universities read a great many predictions and are reasonably good at spotting one.
Some international schools will write a general character reference but explicitly decline to predict A-Level grades. That is the honest position, and it leaves you needing a second source.
What UCAS actually requires
This is where a lot of the anxiety comes from, so it is worth being precise.
UCAS does not prescribe a single method for arriving at a predicted grade. There is no rule that says you must sit invigilated mock examinations. What is required is that the prediction is made by a centre, in good faith, on the basis of demonstrable evidence of your attainment.
Supervised assessment is our standard, not a regulatory one. We use it because it is the most defensible evidence available for a candidate we have not taught for two years, and because a prediction backed by a paper sat under examination conditions and marked against the official mark scheme is one we can stand behind if a university queries it.
That distinction matters. Any provider telling you that UCAS mandates their particular process is overstating it.
A note on providers who quote you a grade. If somebody offers to supply a specific predicted grade before assessing you, walk away. A predicted grade is an assessment outcome, not a product feature. We will not agree a grade in advance, and neither should anyone else.
How the process works for international candidates
1. Registration and evidence gathering
You complete an academic questionnaire covering your syllabus codes, your intended examination series, your target universities and courses, and your tutoring arrangements. If you work with a tutor, we take their details and ask your permission to contact them directly.
2. Review of your existing evidence
We look at what already exists: your tutor's progress reports, records of syllabus coverage, marked work, and any CAIE past papers you have completed under timed conditions. This is genuinely useful context. It tells us your trajectory, your consistency, and where your weaknesses sit, none of which a single sitting reveals.
It is context, not a substitute. Work marked by the person teaching you, in conditions we did not supervise, is not evidence we can independently vouch for.
3. Supervised online assessments
Two assessments per subject, sat under supervised conditions on video, recorded. The paper is released shortly before the start time; you write by hand and submit photographs immediately at the end, on camera.
For candidates overseas, sittings are scheduled around your time zone. We have run assessments across a wide spread of time differences — an early-morning or late-evening slot in your local time is normally workable. Tell us your city and we will schedule accordingly.
4. Marking and prediction
Papers are marked against the official Cambridge mark scheme and converted using real published grade thresholds from recent series. You receive your predicted grade with a written rationale — not just a letter, but the reasoning and the marks behind it — within seven days of your final assessment.
5. Reference and submission
We write your reference and submit it, with your predicted grades, through UCAS as your centre. Your application is linked to us by our centre buzzword, and we manage it through the Adviser Portal.
Which subjects we assess for CAIE predicted grades
We assess across the Cambridge International A-Level range, including the sciences, mathematics, economics and business, and the humanities. The subjects we see most often from private candidates are Mathematics (9709), Further Mathematics (9231) and Physics (9702) — the self-studied maths-and-science combination is a recurring pattern, usually from candidates applying for engineering, mathematics or physics courses.
For each subject we assess two papers, chosen to cover the widest span of the syllabus in two sittings and matched to the route your tutor has actually taught you. Applied components vary between candidates, and Cambridge revises its syllabuses periodically, so we confirm your exact components in writing when you register — checked against the syllabus for the series you are sitting rather than a generic list.
Where you are only part-way through the syllabus at the time of assessment — normal for an October application when finals are the following June — we assess what has been taught and say so explicitly in the reference. A prediction that acknowledges its own basis is stronger than one that pretends to more coverage than exists.
If your subject is not listed above, ask. The answer is usually yes.
Will the reference be generic?
This is the fair version of the question, and it deserves a straight answer.
A reference from a centre that has assessed you twice per subject is not the same document as a reference from a teacher who has taught you for two years. Nobody should claim otherwise.
What it is instead is specific. It states who assessed you, on which components, under what conditions, against which mark scheme, and what you scored. It draws on your tutor's longitudinal evidence where that evidence exists, and it attributes it honestly. Admissions teams are used to reading references for private candidates, and a precise, evidence-anchored reference from a registered centre reads considerably better than a vague one from a school that has never seen your A-Level work.
The way to make it stronger is to bring us in early. A candidate we have been in contact with for a year — whose tutor we have spoken to, whose progress we have followed — gets a fuller reference than one who arrives six weeks before the deadline.
Timings: when to start
Work backwards from your UCAS deadline.
Your deadline | Book assessments by | Why |
15 October (Oxford, Cambridge, medicine, dentistry, veterinary) | Late August | Assessment, marking and reference must all complete before the deadline. |
Late January (main deadline for most courses) | November | Comfortable margin for scheduling around your school term. |
Applying a year ahead | Register 12+ months out | Lets us follow your progress and write a substantially better reference. |
Two things push international candidates earlier than UK ones. Time-zone scheduling narrows the available slots, and if your studies are running alongside a full national-curriculum school timetable, your free windows are fewer. Do not leave it to the deadline month.
Fees
Service | Fee |
Single subject — two supervised assessments, marking, predicted grade with written rationale | £225 |
Full Application Package — three subjects, inclusive of your UCAS reference and submission | £770 |
Fees cover assessment, marking against the official mark scheme, review of your tutor's evidence, correspondence with your tutor, preparation of your reference and submission through UCAS.
Tutoring is offered separately and is never a condition of assessment. We are not going to assess you and then tell you that you need to buy lessons from us to improve the result.
Frequently asked questions
Will Educo London be my official UCAS referee, or do I still need to find someone else?
We act as your centre and referee, and submit your predicted grades and reference directly. You do not need a separate referee. One exception: if your school intends to remain your referee, we can supply the assessed grade and rationale as evidence to your school instead, and they submit. Tell us early which route applies.
How is my application linked to Educo London?
Through our centre buzzword, which we give you when you register. Your application then appears in our Adviser Portal, where we attach your reference and predicted grades.
Will you talk to my private tutor?
Yes, with your written permission, and we prefer to. A tutor who has taught you for a year holds evidence we cannot generate ourselves.
Do the assessments cover AS content only, or the full A-Level?
It depends on where you are in the syllabus when you sit them. If you are applying in the October before June finals, expect assessment weighted towards AS and early A2 material — that is what you will have covered. We describe the scope precisely in the reference rather than implying full-syllabus coverage.
Are the grade boundaries real?
Yes. We use published Cambridge thresholds from recent series rather than an internally invented scale.
Have universities accepted predictions submitted by Educo London? We submit through the standard centre route, and universities assess the candidate rather than the centre. Admissions teams are not weighing up Educo London; they are weighing up you, your grades, your personal statement and your evidence. What we control is that the prediction reaching them is defensible — sat under supervised conditions, marked against the official mark scheme, converted using real grade thresholds, and set out with the reasoning attached.
I am in a very different time zone. Is that a problem?
No. Tell us your city when you enquire and we will schedule around it.
Can I do this if I am only taking one subject with you?
Yes — £225 per subject. Where another centre or school is handling the rest of your application, we can provide the assessed grade as evidence for them to use.
Start early, apply calmly
The candidates who find this straightforward are the ones who sort it out a year ahead. The ones who find it stressful are the ones who discover in September that nobody can predict their grades.
If you are studying CAIE A-Levels abroad and want to know whether we can assess your subjects, message us with your syllabus codes, your intended examination series, and your application year. We usually reply within two hours during the day.
Educo London · UCAS Centre 21393
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