February 2025 Psychology subject update
Welcome to your Pearson Edexcel Psychology February 2025 subject update.
Hello colleagues,
We are keen to improve these updates and make them as useful as possible for you, so would love your feedback on them - please see the survey below.
In addition to a number of general news items, including the fast approaching deadline for exam entries for the summer 2025 series, I have shared links to upcoming free training events in March for both GCSE and A Level Psychology and a 'spotlight' on some recently added or updated free resources including exemplar candidate responses for A Level Psychology.
It's been great to speak to a growing number of teachers using Teams video calls recently - if a conversation of this type would be more useful than an email exchange please don't hesitate to book one using the link in my contact details below.
Best wishes,
Tim Lawrence
Psychology Subject Advisor
If you have any questions, then please do contact me:
☎ Call: 0344 463 2535
✉ Email: teachingpsychology@pearson.com
💻 Book a Teams meeting with me: https://bit.ly/4bBZjpB
This update includes:
- Give your feedback: help us to improve these subject updates.
- Exam entry deadlines: for the May/June 2025 exam series
- Other general updates: including examiner vacancies, summer 2026 provisional exam timetables, and sources of information and support.
- A Level Psychology: upcoming free online training in March and a spotlight on our recently published exemplar pack.
- GCSE Psychology: upcoming free online training in March and a spotlight on our free topic guides.
- International A Level: a reminder of the recently updated free resources and support documents available on our website.
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A reminder that the deadline for making entries for the Summer 2025 examination series is 21 February 2025 for AS, A level and GCSE.
For international qualifications it is  21 March 2025. It is also the 21 March 2025 for external units for BTEC Nationals.
After these dates late entry fees will be charged. Please note that your Exams Officer may have their own internal deadlines in order to get the information necessary to make entries.Â
The Provisional timetables for Summer 2026 will be available on our provisional timetables web page from Monday 3rd February.
The feedback window will run until Friday 21st March. Please send any feedback to timetables@pearson.com.
We're looking for knowledgeable and passionate individuals to become Pearson examiners for the 2025 exam series across a wide range of subjects. Becoming an examiner is a great way to deepen your subject expertise, spread your assessment knowledge within your department and acquire valuable insights into the assessment process, empowering you to better prepare your learners for their exams. You can enjoy the convenience of working remotely, fitting it around your other commitments, and augmenting your income. It can also help you build your professional networks and benefit from opportunities for progression and continuous professional development.
On our general qualifications assessment support page, you can find news, information and updates from Ofqual, the DfE, JCQ and Pearson relating to exams and assessments for our GCSE, AS and A level qualifications.
Pearson general qualifications bulletins are sent regularly providing you with key information and updates on our qualifications and assessments for both UK and International centres. You can sign-up to receive these from the link below.
You can follow Pearson on socials to keep up to date with the latest news about our qualifications and services.
Our new enhanced Qualifications Support Portal has been designed to make getting help quicker and easier than ever.
A new contact-us journey enables you to connect quickly with our support teams in the way that suits you; via live-chat for real-time assistance, or webform, as well as traditional phone or email routes. You can use your Pearson Portal (Edexcel Online) credentials to access secure personalised support even faster and view your existing cases.
Our comprehensive support article library has also been restructured with sections specific to teachers, as well as stronger search functions, to resolve your own queries quickly and easily.
04 March 2025 at 16:00-17:30 GMT
This free online event, created by our Senior Examiner, is intended to support teachers who are delivering Pearson Edexcel A Level Psychology. The trainer will be supporting you in preparing your learners in for their examinations.
You will:
- Discuss the requirements of mark schemes, including those relating to extended response questions
- Identify common mistakes made my candidates and discuss how to avoid them
- Observe the commentaries of new exemplar material, focusing on how marks are awarded to real candidate responses
- Be provided with strategies to use in the classroom to help better prepare your students for their exams
We have previously advertised the new pack of exemplar candidate responses to questions in the 2024 exam series, with examiner commentaries, which was published at the end of November. However we are aware that at the end of a long term a number of teachers will have missed this announcement.
The zip folder linked below (which requires an Edexcel Online login to download as the 2024 papers are still 'locked' for use as mock exams) contains a set of exemplars for each of the three A Level papers and the two AS papers.
These include top-level answers to a number of essay questions - which have been requested by many teachers.
For example the set for 9PS0-03 (A Level paper 3) contains an 18/20 response to the final essay question. an 11/12 mark response to question 5, and a 14/16 response to question 4.
20 March 2025 at 16:00-17:30 GMT
This free online event, created by our Senior Examiner is intended to support teachers who are delivering Pearson Edexcel Pearson Edexcel GCSE Psychology. The trainer will be covering strategies and insights to prepare your learners for their examinations.
You will:
- discuss the requirements of mark schemes, including those relating to extended response questions
- identify common mistakes made by candidates and discuss how to avoid them.
- identify effective teaching strategies to prepare students for various types of exam questions, including multiple-choice, short answer, and essay questions
- explore best practices for marking and providing constructive feedback to students
Our free topic guides are written by senior examiners as companions to the specification, and provide additional details of key studies in order to give teachers useful background information which can usefully inform teaching decisions.
The Topic Guide for Memory was updated recently to clarify the findings of Peterson and Peterson's classic study into the duration of Short Term Memory as follows:
Results indicated that the the percentage of correct responses dropped significantly as the recall interval increased to 18 seconds.Peterson and Peterson first presented data showing how many correct responses were eventually given after each interference interval. This fell from approximately 80% with the 3 second interval to approximately 10% with the 18 second interval.
For statistical modelling they also analysed those responses which were given less than 2.83 seconds after the interference interval ended (the mean latency, or delay).
Approximately 50% of trigrams were correctly recalled after 3 seconds within this time period, falling to approximately 5% after 18 seconds.
As we shared in last month's update, a number of supporting documents have recently been refreshed, with updated links and other improvements. These include the updated and current (for exams in 2025) specifications, new exemplar candidate responses and a range of updated and improved guides and booklets which we shared in November. In case you missed this announcement see below for links to all of these updated free resources.
Subject advisor
Tim Lawrence
Psychology and international Science
