General Qualifications Bulletin - International - Issue 55
Dear Colleague,
Now that the exam season is over, I’d like to thank everyone – from the senior leaders, heads of department, teachers and exams officers, to the teaching assistants, technicians, administrative staff, operations teams and everyone in between – for all the hard work you’ve put in to make this year go smoothly.
Since the May/June exams have been completed, we’ve had over 3.6 million scripts returned and we’ve already marked over 90 million items. We also had 4,884 onscreen assessments take place this summer; and whilst that may seem a small number in comparison, it’s double the number of onscreen assessments that were sat in 2023. With more subjects being made available with onscreen assessments in 2025 it’s an exciting prospect to look forward to.
I’d also like to thank you if you’ve worked with us as an examiner this year. It’s a monumental joint effort across the education sector every year to undertake a full exam series and issue results in time for results day and examiners play an incredibly important role in this. Your commitment to ensuring learners get their results on time is second to none.
This edition of the qualifications bulletin provides information to support you in your results day planning. We’ll have a results day special bulletin in the week beginning 12 August 2024 where we will be sharing more detail about post-results support, appeals and what to expect in the build-up to results day, as well as other important and helpful information.
I know some of you will have finished for this term already and others will be finishing very soon. I hope you all have the chance to have a fantastic and well-earned break. In the meantime, if you need any more information or want to share any feedback with us, you can always get in touch via our support portal. We will always do our best to get you the answers as quickly as possible.
With best wishes,
Hayley White
Vice President, Assessment, Standards and Services
Now exams are over you’ll be looking ahead to results days. As always, we’ll be here to support you with post-results services and answering any queries you may have.
ResultsPlus
On results day, once you’ve received your students grades you can get a detailed breakdown of their performance on each question at individual student, class or cohort level using ResultsPlus - our online results analysis tool for teachers.
Included as part of your qualification fees, ResultsPlus gives you a detailed breakdown of your students’ performance in Pearson Edexcel exams and BTEC external assessments. Take a look at our video that explains how this service can help you gain a better understanding of their results.
Find out more and set up your ResultsPlus account ahead of results day
ResultsPlus Group Analysis
Developed to support multi-academy trusts and groups of schools, our ResultsPlus Group Analysis service can provide senior leaders with a clear overall picture of student performance across all their schools in Pearson Edexcel exams and BTEC external assessments. It can also be used to analyse your mock exam results, making this service a valuable tool for use throughout the academic year.
Take a look at our short video that explains how ResultsPlus Group Analysis will work for you.
We’ll need to set up a separate account for your multi-academy trust or groups of schools, even if your own school is already set up with a ResultsPlus account.
Please ensure you have created a ResultsPlus Group Analysis account before the end of term and be ready for results day
Access to Scripts
Available from results day, our Access to Scripts* service allows you to view your candidates’ marked scripts online or download as PDFs, providing transparency of marking and to help you make decisions around requests for reviews of marking and inform future teaching and learning.
The Access to Scripts service provides a rich source of information, enabling detailed analysis to inform teaching and learning and support students and giving insights and visibility that performance data alone cannot provide.
Read more about Access to Scripts, along with FAQs and a step-by-step user guide.
Access to Scripts availability
The Access to Scripts service will be removed for most qualifications where work has been uploaded to the Learner Work Transfer portal from the May/June 2024 series.
This means you will no longer have to wait for our processing team to respond to any access to script copy (ATSC) requests with the examiner’s mark breakdown to support any review of marking decisions.
From learner results day, the Learner Work Transfer portal will be available for you to view learner work previously submitted and which the examiner has based their marks on.
To access the breakdown of marks for individual questions on the learner material, you can find this in ResultsPlus.
Read more about Access to Scripts and Learner Work Transfer
The Access to Scripts portal can only be accessed by Edexcel Online users who have the Exam Viewer permission ticked in their Edexcel Online profiles. Exams officers are able to give teachers access to Exam Viewer. Don’t forget to ask your exams officer for access before you break for the summer, to be ready for the post-results period.
*This service is available for any exam paper that has been marked online. Written permission must be gained from candidates before scripts can be accessed.
Support for students ahead of results day
Waiting for exam results can be nerve-wracking for many students. We’ve got a guide to Understanding results and grades containing helpful information about what to expect on results day and where to find further support. The guide includes information on:
- dates for results days
- receiving and understanding results
- grades and grade boundaries
- what steps to take if they are not happy with their results
- university applications
- certificates
- where to find further support.
Please pass this guide on to students, parents and carers
You can stay up to date with all our support for 2024 on our General qualifications assessment support page.
Post-results fees and key dates – May/June 2024
Please take a look at the fees for all our post-results services and our post-results key dates for Maty/June 2024.
Fees for post-results services (from 1 August 2024 to 31 July 2025)
JCQ support for results days
Please do also refer to the JCQ documentation for results day support.
JCQ Release of results: June 2024 examinations guidance
JCQ Post-results services booklet
Letter to students from Ofqual and UCAS
Ofqual’s Chief Regulator, Sir Ian Bauckham CBE, and UCAS’s Chief Executive, Dr Jo Saxton CBE, have written a letter to students who will receive their results on 15 August 2024. The letter outlines important information about results this year. Please do pass this on to students, parents and carers.
As teachers and Heads of departments, you may not have had to access our secure systems for some time, with the next time you need to do this being on learner results days in August.
We’d like to take this opportunity to remind all users of systems such as Edexcel Online and ResultsPlus, that there is now a requirement to authenticate via an app on a smart phone in order to access these systems.
If you haven't accessed these platforms for some time, we would urge you to do so before finishing for the summer, so we can work with you to resolve any issues and avoid any delays in access on results days.
If you need any support with this now, or during the holidays, please read the information we sent out to teachers last week. You can also access the support documents should you need any additional help.
If you are authenticating for the first time, additional support can be found in our Logging in and Accessing Pearson Services using the Pearson Portal support article or viewing our Pearson Portal Authenticator FAQs.
Taking these steps now will ensure you all have a successful results day.
Before you finish for the summer break, have you given us your feedback on this year’s exam papers?
We wish to provide students with the best possible exam experience, and your insights are crucial in helping us achieve this goal. If you're a teacher whose students have taken any of our exams in the May/June 2024 series, we are eager to hear your thoughts.
Your feedback will play a vital role in shaping the future of our qualifications and assessments. Your input will be shared with our senior examiners and across our subject teams to help us continuously improve future assessments and enhance the exam experience for students.
Please take a few minutes to provide your feedback, thank you
As you start preparations for results days’ we’re here to support you throughout in the lead up to and throughout the results period.
For all you need to know about the dates and times of results days and where the results can be found on Edexcel Online and EDI, take a look at our support article.
Results Dates: Edexcel Online & EDI File Release Day/Times
We’re also running another live online event in August, focused on helping you prepare for issuing results in August and navigating the post-results period successfully.
The next event is on Monday 12 August @ 10am - 11am (London BST).
The brand-new 2024 Pearson School Report brings together over 12,000+ teacher, student and sector voices on education – the challenges, solutions in action, and opportunities for the future. Since 2022, our Pearson School Reports have showcased educator and student views that have fuelled conversations from playgrounds to the Houses of Parliament. And this year, we’ve gone even further – with more questions on more topics than ever before.
English
International GCSE English as a Second Language
The Pearson Edexcel International GCSE (9–1) English as a Second Language qualification has recently been re-developed for first assessment from 2025. It will replace English as a Second Language (2017) which will have its last assessment in May/June 2025.
The new qualification is made up of four equally weighted units and will follow a unitised assessment structure. As it is a skills-based qualification, this is intended to be taught with all assessments at the end of the course of study, while allowing for individual resit opportunities.
Students are able to enter and sit (and re-sit) the individual unit exams in any series from May/June 2025. Once they have completed all unit exams, they can cash-in for an overall qualification grade. Each unit may be entered for as a separate unit either over a course of two or more examination series, or within a single examination series.
Please note that the codes have been amended to allow for this unitised approach as follows:
Paper |
New Code (Issue 2) |
Old Code (Issue 1) |
|---|---|---|
Paper 1: Reading |
4WES1/01 |
4ES2/01 |
Paper 2: Listening |
4WES2/01 |
4ES2/02 |
Paper 3: Writing |
4WES3/01 |
4ES2/03 |
Paper 4: Speaking |
4WES4/01 |
4ES2/04 |
Cash-in code |
4XES2 |
N/A |
There are no other changes to course content or assessment. If you have been using teaching materials relating to 4ES2, this is all still relevant for 4XES2 as course content and assessment has not changed.
This International GCSE in English as a Second Language (4XES2) is available to centres outside of the UK as well as to independent schools within the UK.
Art & Design
We have released our new series of 'Drawing In....' bitesize videos for GCSE and International GCSE Art and Design. These videos focused on various 2D and 3D approaches to drawing within the different Art and Design titles and accompany our Drawing Guides.
- GCSE Art and Design - YouTube for the GCSE drawing videos
- GCSE Art and Design Drawing Guide
- International GCSE Art and Design - YouTube for the International GCSE drawing videos
- International GCSE Art and Design Drawing Guide
For all resources to support planning and delivery, please see the latest Subject Advisor update.
Languages
A Level Chinese and Japanese amendment
We are pleased to announce that Ofqual has approved our amendments to A level Chinese (9CN0) and Japanese (9JN0), for first teaching from September 2024 (first assessment summer 2026).
These changes reflect an update to the A level subject content set by the Department for Education for both qualifications, which was announced in October 2023 following a consultation.
As a summary, the main changes are:
- questions and responses to comprehension (listening and reading) tasks now appear in English instead of the target language (unless writing skills are also intentionally being assessed)
- questions about the literary works and films now appear in both the target language and English. Students will still be required to respond in the target language to these questions.
Other smaller changes are summarised in the Summary of changes table in the specification for each qualification.
The specification and sample assessment materials have been updated to show the changes made.
Take a look at the updated A level Chinese materials
Take a look at the updated A level Japanese materials
Subject Advisor support
To stay up to date, make sure you’re signed up to receive all the latest news and information from your Subject Advisor. Find out more about the support your Subject Advisor offers by watching a short video they’ve each created.
Take a look at your Subject Advisor's video and sign up for your subject newsletter today
Our Key Dates Finder enables you to find all of the key dates for Pearson general qualifications and subjects in one place. Here are those taking place over the next few months.
Date |
Qualification |
Exam |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
22 July 24 |
International A level, iPrimary & iLowerSecondary |
Oct 24 |
Basedata issued |
12 August 24 |
International GCSE |
Nov 24 |
Basedata issued |
14 August 24 |
AS & A level, AEA, International A level, Edexcel Awards Level 3, Project Level 3 and Core Maths Level 3 |
Jun 24 |
Restricted release of results to centres |
15 August 24 |
AS & A level, AEA, International A level, Edexcel Awards Level 3, Project Level 3 and Core Maths Level 3 |
Jun 24 |
Release of results to candidates |
21 August 24 |
GCSE, International GCSE, Edexcel Awards L1 & 2, Project L1 & 2, Entry Level Certificate, iPrimary and iLowerSecondary |
Jun 24 |
Restricted release of results to centres |
22 August 24 |
GCSE, International GCSE, Edexcel Awards L1 & 2, Project L1 & 2, Entry Level Certificate, iPrimary and iLowerSecondary |
Jun 24 |
Release of results to candidates |
29 August 24 |
International A level, iPrimary & iLowerSecondary |
Oct 24 |
Entry deadline |
30 August 24 |
International A level, iPrimary & iLowerSecondary |
Oct 24 |
Late entry fees charged from this date |
31 August 24 |
All general qualifications |
Jun 24 |
Deadline to request early certification |
1 Sept 24 |
AS & A level Music Technology 8MT0/02 & 9MT0/02 |
Jun 25 |
Brief and logbook pre-release released on our website |
2 Sept 24 |
GCSE English Language and Mathematics |
Nov 24 |
Basedata issued |
6 Sept 24 |
International A level and Project |
Jan 25 |
Basedata issued |
6 Sept 24 |
International A level |
Oct 24 |
Deadline to request transferred candidate arrangements |
13 Sept 24 |
International GCSE |
Nov 24 |
Entry deadline |
14 Sept 24 |
International GCSE |
Nov 24 |
Late entry fees charged from this date |
For more information on key dates for post results services please visit our Post-results services key dates page.
We have now published the provisional timetables for International A level and Edexcel Awards for January 2026.
The feedback window is open from Monday 24 June to Friday 19 July. Please send any feedback into us at Timetables@Pearson.com.
