April 2026 Psychology subject update
Hi everyone,
Your April Psychology update is here! We have news of upcoming training events, support for centres affected by the conflict in the Middle East, a UCAS consultation and examiner vacancies this month.
As ever, do get in touch if I might be able to help with any aspect of your teaching - follow the link below to the bottom of the page to book a Teams call with me or to get in touch via email.
Best wishes,
Tim Lawrence
Psychology Subject Advisor
This update includes:
- Key dates
- General updates: support for centres in the Middle East and a UCAS consultation.
- Become an examiner: we are recruiting now for the June 2026 series.
- Training and professional development: recording available from our recent A Level issues and debates training.
- FAQs from psychology teachers
| 7 July | Transition to A Level Network online training |
| 13 August | A Level and IAL results day |
| 20 August | GCSE results day |
Final exam timetables for the summer 2026 exam series are available on our webpage linked below.
We know many of our centres and students use the UCAS application service, when applying to Higher Education in the UK. We wanted to let you know that UCAS are currently consulting on the operation of the UCAS undergraduate admissions cycle, including:
- the number of initial choices a student can make
- the firm and insurance choice
- application deadlines, including the early (October) deadline and January Equal Consideration Date.
This is an opportunity for you to have your say. You can find out further details about the consultation and respond on the UCAS website. The deadline to respond is 18:00 (UK time) on 22 April 2026.
We know the ongoing conflict in the Middle East continues to affect students, families and centres in very real ways.
This page brings together the latest guidance and support available for students whose learning and assessments have been disrupted, with any new updates added here as the situation continues to evolve.
We are recruiting now for examiners for the June 2026 series! This is a great opportunity to develop your understanding of the assessments and improve your support of your students as a result. See the link below for a list of vacancies.
We have face-to-face training events coming up in April in China and Sri Lanka:
- Hong Kong - 17 April
- Beijing - 20 April
- Colombo - 27 April
For UK A Level teachers we have a new live online training event open for booking now: Transition to A Level Network on 7 July. This free training will provide you with an opportunity to learn and discuss effective teaching and learning strategies, ensuring that your students are well-prepared for A Level Psychology. Given the similarity between UK and International A Levels this event will be useful for IAL Psychology teachers too.
Follow the link below to find out more and book onto these events!
The link above will also show options to access recordings of past training content, including the following playlists:
For A Level, IAL and GCSE Psychology the guidance from senior examiners is the same. For extended response (essay) questions, levels based mark schemes for 'evaluate' and 'assess' questions require conclusions or judgements for higher bands for AO3. However this does not mean that a 'final concluding paragraph' is needed. More effective are 'mini-conclusions' at the end of each paragraph of evaluation or analysis.
A final conclusion can be an effective way to pull together arguments and present 'overall conclusions / judgements', but to be creditworthy they need to 'do something new' and not merely repeat previous ideas. For example a useful final conclusion might make a reasoned judgement about the relative importance of mini-conclusions previously presented.
If the issue is that you can't download padlocked exam materials (the papers, mark schemes and examiner reports from the last 12 months) then most likely you need your Edexcel Online account re-set so you can get the Multi-Factor Authentication working. Contact our teaching services team through the support portal, or if you don't have an EOL account contact the exam officer at your school.
If you can access resources generally but the website is showing error messages, it's worth trying the following:
- Refresh the page (sometimes the first paper downloads correctly but not the second - a simple refresh can resolve this).
- Clear your browser's cache and try again.
- Try with a different browser (e.g. switch from Edge to Chrome) if you have one.
If these don't work, you can contact me at teachingpsychology@pearson.com and I can send you padlocked papers by secure file transfer.
Subject advisor
Tim Lawrence
Psychology and international Science
