How to talk to your students about exam anxiety
This latest blog in our series on test anxiety offer strategies which teachers might find useful to help reduce their students’ experiences of exam anxiety.
What can schools do about examination and test anxiety
This blog discusses how school staff can help students through exam time, looking at whole-school approaches and supporting individual needs.
Examining the examiners
While students are getting ready to take their exams this summer, exam boards are also busy, completing their examiner recruitment and finalising their arrangements for the series. This is no mean feat. Last summer alone, 63,000 examiners were needed to …
What is it like to experience exam stress? A student perspective
Test anxiety blog series: 2 Authors: Tamsin McCaldin, Kerry-ann Brown and Dr Jo Greenwood With recent changes to exams in England, there has been increased media interest into exam stress and what that might mean for students working towards exams. …
National Reference Test 2019 – 10 things you need to know
Around England, a sample of schools are about to take the third annual National Reference Test (NRT). This test provides a valuable and unique source of evidence about the performance of year 11 students in English language and maths. From …
Evaluating new GCSEs in French, German and Spanish
Last year we committed to do further work to evaluate the new GCSEs in French, German and Spanish, and to consider whether there was a case for making an adjustment to the grading. There are several strands to this work …
Be prepared: GCSE and A level exam contingency day 2019
At Ofqual, and regardless of the weather, our minds are always on the summer. We’re either thinking about the summer exam series just gone or the one to come. Sometimes we’re thinking about the series after that. We’re not alone. …
GCSE tiering decisions for summer 2019
Some of you will remember the announcement we made in August 2018, that we were allowing exam boards to award an exceptional grade 3-3 on the higher tier of GCSE combined science, along with a full-width safety net grade 4-3. …
What happens after exams finish?
GCSE, AS and A level exams finished in late June, and schools and colleges are now nearing the end of term. But what happens to students’ scripts once the exam is over? Here’s a brief guide to marking, who the …
Exam marking: how technology is improving the quality of marking
When asked to think of examiners marking scripts, many people still tend to think of them sitting at a desk with a pile of envelopes from schools and colleges, gradually working through each one in turn. In some subjects, that …