General Qualifications Bulletin - UK - Issue 49
Dear Colleague,
Welcome back! I do hope you have all had a well-earned break and have been able to enjoy the summer holidays. It’s hard to believe we are at the beginning of another academic year, but I hope it is going well so far.
I’m sure many of you have already been reviewing your students’ summer results and used our post-results services, ResultsPlus and Access to Scripts, to gain a more in-depth understanding of the data. I hope you are finding these services useful. You can also sign up to subject feedback events over the next few weeks; find out more below.
Another great service is our Customer Support Portal where you can search our library of support articles, contact our subject specialists and join subject community groups. For 24/7 support, read on for further information.
I’m delighted to share that we’ll be hosting our Spotlight on Assessment, Services and Support event in October. Aimed at UK centres, we’ll be covering the highlights, key trends and outcomes from the summer series across GCSE, International GCSE and A level with guest speaker Mary Curnock Cook CBE. You can find further details below along with a link to register and book your place.
As ever, 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
Congratulations to all students who received results from the summer exam series, and to all teaching and support staff.
If you or your students do have any concerns about results, there is still time to use our post-results services. Download our guide to help you understand your students’ results, the steps you can take to get more insight about their grades and what to do if you’re unsure that the right grade has been given, using our ResultsPlus and Access to Scripts services.
You can also take a look at grade boundaries for all qualifications and view our guides to understanding the 2023 approach to grade boundaries for our UK and international qualifications.
Full details on our post-results services are available on our website along with key dates and fees.
ResultsPlus
Don’t forget you can still use our post-results services to help you take a deeper dive into your students' results from summer 2023 and support departmental CPD.
Take a look at our ResultsPlus video providing an overview of the detail you can retrieve at student, class and cohort level.
You can also watch our video that shows you how our new ResultsPlus Group Analysis service can support multi-academy trusts and groups of schools. This 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.
Access to Scripts
Our Access to Scripts service is open until 15 December 2023. Not just useful for post-results support, you can download student exam scripts* and gain a rich source of information enabling detailed analysis to inform teaching and learning and support students, giving insights and visibility that performance data alone cannot provide.
Take a closer look at Access to Scripts and see how other centres have used this valuable service to support departmental CPD via our case studies.
*Written permission must be gained from candidates before scripts can be accessed.
Supporting continuous professional development with the PD Academy
Our Professional Development Academy online portal supports teaching professionals in their continuous professional development, from sessions designed to inform on specification changes to learning strategies and everything in between.
As part of our post-results support, we’re now running online summer 2023 subject feedback events where we’ll present key themes on how students performed in the 2023 summer series and give teachers the opportunity to explore this feedback. We’ll also share ideas on how to make the most of the post-results support available and how this can be used to help prepare students for future exam series.
Visit the Professional Development Academy and search for your subject to find out more about the events, dates and how to sign up.
If you have students wishing to take the November 2023 resits for GCSE English Language and/or Maths, the entry deadline is 4 October 2023.
Please take a look at the exam timetable for the November resit dates.
You can also access the resit rules for GCSE English Language.
We’re hosting our post-results review event in person on Thursday 12 October, 11:00-15:00 at our London office, 80 Strand.
The focus for this event will be summer 2023 outcomes for our UK and international qualifications, along with great insight and discussion around the future of assessment and what’s new from us at Pearson.
The event will be chaired by Hayley White and assessment experts from across Pearson. You’ll enjoy opportunities to network with colleagues and with our assessment team.
Take a look at the agenda and complete the registration form to secure your place.
We want to ensure you have all the help and support you need at your fingertips; that’s why we’ve got a library of support articles hosted on our Customer Support Portal. Each article contains answers, detailed information, step-by-step guides, instructional videos, and general advice. Articles require no special access, are easily searchable by keywords in their title, and are available 24/7, 365 days a year.
Take a look at our short video that explains more about our support portal, the information you can find and the further benefits it provides.
You can contact your Subject Specialists using the Customer Support Portal, and it is also home to our teacher and administration community groups. By joining these groups, you can ask questions directly to our Subject Advisors, browse posts and updates and share ideas and good practices with colleagues. And for good measure, we also have the portal user guide.
Check out the Pearson Support Portal.
To help results days go as smoothly as possible, we’ve created some guidance for exams officers for all the essential results processes.
Please take a look at EO Support: New Academic Year Essential Information covering important topics, including:
- Deadlines and support for post-results services and appeals
- November exam series
- Latest JCQ documents and guidance including this year’s ICE document
- Our 2023/24 Information Manual
- Entry key dates and guidance
- And much more!
Autumn exam series
You can view the full November series timetable on our timetables page.
The stationery and materials spreadsheet for the autumn series is now available to download.
To enable us to improve the experience of teachers using our qualifications and students sitting our exams, we gather feedback after each exam series.
Thank you to all those that have completed the surveys so far; we really appreciate your feedback. If you're a teacher, and your students took any of our exams in the May/June 2023 series, there’s still time to let us know what you liked or didn't like in this year's exam papers.
We'll share your feedback with our senior examiners and across teams to ensure we continue to make improvements to our papers, where appropriate, so we can make sure your students have the best exam experience.
The surveys will close on 30 September. Please complete the surveys and have your say. Thank you.
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 during September and early in the autumn term.
Date |
Qualification |
Exam Series |
Description |
|---|---|---|---|
20/09/2023 |
GCSE English Language and Maths |
Nov 23 |
Final date for ordering modified papers using Access Arrangements Online (AAO) |
20/09/2023 |
International GCSE |
Nov 23 |
Deadline to request modified papers |
04/10/2023 |
GCSE English Language and Maths |
Nov 23 |
Entry deadline |
04/10/2023 |
Edexcel Award |
Jan 24 |
Deadline to request modified papers |
17/10/2023 |
Project and Edexcel Award |
Jan 24 |
Entry deadline |
05/11/2023 |
International GCSE |
Nov 23 |
Coursework submission deadline |
For more information on key dates for post results services please visit our Post-results services key dates page.
Our Subject Advisors do an incredible job supporting teachers, schools and colleges all year round.
Now that a new academic year has begun, make sure you’re signed up to receive all the latest news and updates from your subject area. And if you’ve not met your Subject Advisor in person, take a look at the videos they’ve done to introduce themselves and hear them speaking about the type of support they provide and the experience they have within their fields.
Take a look at your Subject Advisor's video and sign up for your subject newsletter today.
Bookmark our new teaching, learning and assessment 2023/2024 webpage.
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