GCSE | Schools Week

Treasury marks DfE’s 11,500-word homework laying out its vision

The Department for Education has published an 11,590-word “outcome delivery plan,” detailing the wide-ranging goals and performance metrics it agreed with the Treasury last year to justify its funding. Sector leaders welcomed the move to greater transparency and accountability. But they said the DfE’s plan lacked detail overall and lacked metrics in significant areas, including […]

Exams 2021: AQA to return 26% of fees paid by schools

Exam board AQA has confirmed it will once again return just 26 per cent of entry fees paid this year after saving £45 million. In a statement today the board said it was returning all of the money it saved to schools “because, as we’ve always said, we’d never want to benefit financially from the […]

DfE to cover 2021 autumn exam costs for students and schools

The Department for Education has confirmed it will reimburse schools for the cost of organising autumn exams and covering fees for students unhappy with teacher-assessed grades. The government says that given the “unique circumstances” of Covid, students and families should not have to cover exam entry fees if they decide to sit exams in the […]

Exam changes can’t compensate for Covid hit to disadvantaged pupils, says government

Changes to next year’s exams cannot compensate for pupils’ divided experiences during the pandemic, the government has said, even as research from its own exams regulator laid bare the disruption to disadvantaged children’s education. On Monday, Ofqual and the Department for Education published a consultation on measures to “help mitigate the impact of disruption” for […]

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. […]

GCSEs and A-levels: 7 key trends from provisional 2021 entries data

GCSE and A-level entries continued to rise this year, but subject-level data reveals big changes in some subjects. Exams for the qualifications have been cancelled this year because of the pandemic. Teachers will instead determine grades and exam boards will quality assure their results. Here we look at some of the key trends in Ofqual’s […]

GCSE results 2020: Top grades soar, as nearly four in five pupils pass

The proportion of 7 or above grades handed to GCSE pupils in England has soared after the government U-turn to award teacher grades. Pupils are receiving either their centre assessed grades (CAGs) or standardised grades, whichever is highest, this morning following the U-turn on Monday. In 2019, 21.9 per cent of grades given out to […]

‘Attenborough effect’ is ‘fuelling’ interest in GCSE science

The “Attenborough effect” – where pupils want to “make a difference” in the world – is fuelling an interest in science, the vice president of Pearson has said. In England, 767,722 16-year-olds took science double award this year – a rise of 5.1 per cent (37,132) from the 730,590 pupils who entered the exam last […]

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 […]