We take responsibility for the issues that affected GCE A Level Chinese, GCSE English Language 2.0, and our legacy PTE Academic Online Test at different times between 2019 and 2023.

Our actions at the time did not meet regulatory requirements or the high standards that learners and educators rightly expect from us.

For each of these cases, we conducted a comprehensive review of our processes and have implemented robust improvements. Additional details are as follows:  

Chinese A Level:

GCE A Level Chinese plays an important role in meeting the growing demand for Chinese language skills across education and the workplace. To ensure the qualification is appropriate for all learners, we made changes to marking in 2024 and 2025 to make sure examiners were rewarding students appropriately, and for 2025 we made changes to some of the assessments, so they better reflected the sample materials.  

GCSE English Language 2.0:

Pearson set standards for the first time in 2022 for its GCSE English Language 2.0 specification, which was introduced as an alternative pathway to appeal particularly to post-16 students. This was the first summer exam series since exams were cancelled in 2020 and 2021, which made setting standards challenging for a new specification. Ofqual identified a risk that we had not anticipated when setting the standards and which we did not act quickly enough to address. When grading fully returned to normal in 2024, we carried out a comprehensive review of the standards for the qualification and aligned it with national standards.       

PTE Academic Online:

Introduced during COVID‑19 to meet urgent demand, this online service is no longer in use. It was never used for visa or migration purposes. In 2023, after detecting organised malpractice, we suspended availability, conducted a full investigation, and revoked affected scores to protect admissions integrity. All current PTE results remain completely unaffected and continue to meet the highest standards.

We apologise to all those affected. We have learned from these incidents and continue to invest in our systems, processes, and training to ensure our qualifications are delivered to the highest possible standard.