AQA | Schools Week

WJEC grades portal goes down as exam board scrambles to fix issues

Exam board WJEC Eduqas has been forced to temporarily take down its portal for submitting teacher assessed grades just hours before the deadline for schools, after problems displaying data. It is the third exam board to face issues with its website during the past two days. This morning, WJEC, which has entries from over 3,800 […]

Schools shut out from submitting teacher grades after exam board portal crashes

Schools are shut out from submitting teacher grades, just a day before the deadline, after an exam board’s submission portal crashed. OCR realised at lunchtime on Thursday that schools and colleges were unable to submit results to its grade submission system. A spokesperson said “urgent action” is being taken to resolve the problem, but they […]

Heads heap pressure on exam boards by demanding at least 75 per cent of fees back

Nearly two-thirds of headteachers think schools should get back at least 75 per cent of exam fees this summer, heaping more pressure on boards to give a sizeable rebate. But one exam board has already said that 75 per cent is unrealistic. A survey by heads’ union ASCL found 45 per cent of 457 headteachers […]

Exam boards to use one-seventh of usual examiner workforce this summer

Exam boards will save millions by using only one-seventh of the examiners they would usually need in a normal year, while teachers spend their spare time marking assessment papers for GCSEs and A-levels. It comes as 10,000 educators signed a National Education Union letter requesting £500 compensation for teachers involved in deciding grades this year. […]

Exams price row: AQA says schools can now pay just half of fees upfront

One of the country’s largest exam boards has said schools can pay half of their fees now and the rest later after coming under pressure for increasing their prices. As Schools Week revealed today, AQA has increased fees for some of its subjects across GCSE and A-level by about five per cent. It meant an […]

Coronavirus: AQA exam portal is ‘ripe for human error’, schools warn

An exam board’s online portal that requires schools to input potentially thousands of teacher-assessed grades one-by-one is “ripe for human error” and could result in “horribly wrong” grades, school staff have warned. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across England are providing centre-assessment grades and rankings for each pupil after summer exams were cancelled. Exam […]

Exam board furloughs some examiners and offers £250 goodwill payment to others

An exam board is furloughing some of its examiners, but offering others a £250 one-off “goodwill” payment instead. Cambridge Assessment, which owns exam boards OCR and Cambridge International, is the first organisation to tell examiners of its pay arrangements in light of exam cancellations this summer. Whether the boards can use government help to pay […]

Complaints against leading exam boards double in two years

The number of complaints received by Ofqual about England’s largest exam boards has nearly doubled over the past two years, latest figures show. Statistics released by the exams regulator today reveal that there were 143 complaints made against AQA, Pearson and OCR in 2018-19. This is a rise of 54 per cent from the 93 […]

Investigation launched after pupils given question ‘copied’ from textbook

An investigation has been launched after it emerged a question used in the Edexcel GCSE maths paper 3 this week was almost identical to one used in a revision textbook. Pupils took to social media to share their frustration after they were faced with the same diagram, values and answer in Tuesday’s GCSE higher tier […]