Director of Standards and Comparability at Ofqual. She previously worked for the AQA and AEB exam boards.
Last week we announced our plans for making sure students taking GCSEs, AS and A levels, as well as extended project qualifications and the advanced extension award in maths, get grades this summer. We published information for teachers, heads of …
The National Reference Test (or NRT) is now in its fourth year, and schools across England are getting ready to take the test in the coming weeks. This test measures the performance of year 11 students in English language and …
As the deadline approaches for making GCSE entries, we know that schools and colleges will be thinking carefully about the appropriate tier of entry for their students in those subjects that are tiered – maths and statistics, the science suite …
For many years there has been a November GCSE series which provides an opportunity for students to resit English language and maths. It’s mainly for students who didn’t get the results they were aiming for previously, and it is only …
From time to time we see suggestions that one exam board’s GCSE is easier than another, most often because one board has a higher percentage of students achieving high grades. I’d like to explain why simply comparing the grade profiles …
Starting this September, hundreds of thousands of learners will begin studying reformed Functional Skills qualifications (FSQs) in English and maths, offered by a number of different awarding organisations. At levels 1 and 2 these qualifications are used in apprenticeships and …
This is the first year that almost all GCSE students have taken reformed exams and over 99 per cent will get results that are all 9 to 1 grades. Our latest blog looks at what to expect from an Ofqual perspective when results are published on Thursday.
Next Thursday, AS and A level results are released. If you’re counting down the days, here is an update on some of the issues that have arisen over the summer, and a few things to bear in mind when results …
What happens once GCSE and A level exams have finished? An immense amount of work to mark and grade the papers that learners have completed.
In February and March year 11 students from over 300 schools in England took part in the third National Reference Test (NRT) in English and maths. This blog explains how the NRT evidence will be used when the exam boards set grade boundaries in GCSE English language and maths this summer.