The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private schools in Scotland may choose to use GCSEs from England.
The Scottish Qualifications Authority is the executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government responsible for accrediting educational awards. It is partly funded by the Education and Lifelong Learning Directorate of the Scottish Government, and employs approximately 750 staff based in Glasgow and Dalkeith.
The International Baccalaureate (IB), formerly known as the International Baccalaureate Organization (IBO), is a nonprofit foundation headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, and founded in 1968. It offers four educational programmes: the IB Diploma Programme and the IB Career-related Programme for students aged 15 to 19, the IB Middle Years Programme for students aged 11 to 16, and the IB Primary Years Programme for children aged 3 to 12. To teach these programmes, schools must be authorized by the International Baccalaureate.
AQA, formerly the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance, is an awarding body in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It compiles specifications and holds examinations in various subjects at GCSE, AS and A Level and offers vocational qualifications. AQA is a registered charity and independent of the government. However, its qualifications and exam syllabi are regulated by the Government of the United Kingdom, which is the regulator for the public examinations system in England and Wales.
Edexcel is a British multinational education and examination body formed in 1996 and wholly owned by Pearson plc since 2005. It is the only privately owned examination board in the United Kingdom. Its name is a portmanteau term combining the words education and excellence.
OCR is an examination board that sets examinations and awards qualifications. It is one of England, Wales and Northern Ireland's five main examination boards.
The Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) is a non-ministerial government department that regulates qualifications, exams and tests in England. Colloquially and publicly, Ofqual is often referred to as the exam "watchdog".
The General Certificate of Education (GCE) Advanced Level, or A Level, is a main school leaving qualification in England, Wales, Northern Ireland, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. It is available as an alternative qualification in other countries.
Sir Gavin Alexander Williamson is a British politician who most recently served as Minister of State without Portfolio from 25 October to 8 November 2022. He has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for South Staffordshire since 2010. A member of the Conservative Party, Williamson previously served in Theresa May's Cabinet as Government Chief Whip from 2016 to 2017 and Secretary of State for Defence from 2017 to 2019, and as Secretary of State for Education under Boris Johnson from 2019 to 2021.
Dame Sally Claire Davies is a British physician and academic administrator who was the Chief Medical Officer from 2010 to 2019 and Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Health from 2004 to 2016. She worked as a clinician specialising in the treatment of diseases of the blood and bone marrow. She was appointed Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, on 8 February 2019, effective from 8 October 2019. She is one of the founders of the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
The Confederation of Tourism & Hospitality (CTH) is a specialist awarding organisation, offering vocational qualifications for the hospitality, culinary and tourism industries, worldwide.
Dame Glenys Jean Stacey DBE is a solicitor and civil servant serving as chair of the Office for Environmental Protection from February 2021. She was Chief Executive and Chief Regulator of Ofqual, acting in the post from August to December 2020, and previously from 2012 to 2016. Stacey also served as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Probation and led HM Inspectorate of Probation for England and Wales from 2016 and 2019.
Stacey Elizabeth Plaskett is an American politician, attorney, and commentator. She is the delegate to the United States House of Representatives from the United States Virgin Islands' (USVI) at-large congressional district, since 2015. Plaskett has practiced law in New York City, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Jonathan Slater has been a high ranking British civil servant. From May 2016, he was Permanent Secretary of the Department for Education until his abrupt dismissal on 26 August 2020 following a controversy over national school examination grades.
Amanda Mary Victoria Spielman, MA ACA serves as HM Chief Inspector of Education, Children's Services and Skills since January 2017.
Events from 2020 in England
In March 2020, nurseries, schools, and colleges in the United Kingdom were shut down in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. By 20 March, all schools in the UK had closed for all in-person teaching, except for children of key workers and children considered vulnerable. With children at home, teaching took place online. The emergence of a new variant of COVID-19 in December 2020 led to cancellation of face-to-face teaching across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales the following month.
Kathleen Tattersall was a British educationalist, specialising in examination administration. She was the leader of five examination boards in the United Kingdom before becoming the first head of exams regulator Ofqual.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, all secondary education examinations due to be held in 2020 were cancelled. As a result, an alternative method had to be designed and implemented at short notice to determine the qualification grades to be awarded to students for that year. A standardisation algorithm was produced in June 2020 by the regulator Ofqual in England, Qualifications Wales in Wales, Scottish Qualifications Authority in Scotland, and CCEA in Northern Ireland. The algorithm was designed to combat grade inflation, and was to be used to moderate the existing but unpublished centre-assessed grades for A-Level and GCSE students. After the A-Level grades were issued, and after criticism, Ofqual, with the support of HM Government, withdrew these grades. It issued all students the Centre Assessed Grades (CAGs), which had been produced by teachers as part of the process. The same ruling was applied to the awarding of GCSE grades, just a few days before they were issued: CAG-based grades were the ones released on results day.
In 2020, Ofqual, the regulator of qualifications, exams and tests in England, produced a grades standardisation algorithm to combat grade inflation and moderate the teacher-predicted grades for A level and GCSE qualifications in that year, after examinations were cancelled as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
