Growing sense of anticipation as students start the final push to exams and assessments As the long-anticipated and eagerly-awaited break for the Easter holidays arrives, the thoughts of students up and down the country will be turning to their summer …
In September 2015 students will begin studying the new GCSE in English language, which will be graded 9 to 1. The qualification will be first awarded in 2017. The English language GCSE is based on new subject content which includes …
The latest YouGov report is the 13th annual exploration of attitudes to general and vocational qualifications, as well as to Ofqual. The research, which we commissioned and was conducted by YouGov, investigated perceptions and levels of confidence in qualifications and …
I have written to all secondary schools during half-term to provide them with information about the new national reference tests that we are introducing - and to ask them for their support for this important development.
Those of you that have been following this blog will know that we have been undertaking a programme of research in order to evaluate the expected difficulty of the exam boards’ sample GCSE maths papers and their approach to the assessment …
In January we began a research programme looking at differences across the four reformed and accredited GCSE maths specifications – those of AQA, OCR, Pearson and WJEC. The work has comprised four strands: Strand 1 Based on the views of …
When is helping a student not in his best interests, or fair to other students? It is a tricky question, and one of many we considered with a small group of teachers, school leaders and academics in a symposium on …
You may recall that we launched a research programme looking at the four new Ofqual accredited GCSE maths specifications in late January. If you need a refresher on what we’re trying to achieve you could watch my earlier video or …
I am sure many of you will have seen comments in the media over the past few days about the benefits or costs, practicalities or need for students to memorise poetry as part of their secondary school education. This debate …
I hope many of you reading this blog are already aware of the research programme we are undertaking to reassure ourselves, the exam boards, students and other stakeholders regarding the level of demand and difficulty across the four new Ofqual …
I'm Jeremy Benson, Executive Director for Vocational Qualifications (VQs) at Ofqual, the qualifications regulator for Northern Ireland and England. I’ll be blogging about our new approach to regulating VQs as it develops, and about our work and the issues we're …