Separate qualification reviews have taken place in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. These reviews have resulted in the adoption of three different approaches. Wales will retain a modular approach at both GCSE, AS and A level, with the option of resitting individual units to improve the overall grade. Pearson will not be developing new modular specifications that meet the GCSE Qualification Principles for Wales.

However, there are certain qualifications where the number of learners in Wales is too low for any awarding organisation to develop qualifications for award only in Wales. Where there is a reformed qualification in these subjects available in England, Qualifications Wales have invited awarding bodies to apply to have them designated by them for use on publicly funded learning programmes in Wales. These GCSE qualifications will have linear assessment and 9-1 grading.

Pearson are pleased to be able to confirm that we intend to put forward the following GCSE qualifications for designation:

GCSEs for first teaching from 2017:

• GCSE Arabic
• GCSE Astronomy
• GCSE Chinese
• GCSE Citizenship Studies
  
• GCSE Italian
• GCSE Japanese
• GCSE Modern Greek
• GCSE Psychology
• GCSE Russian
• GCSE Statistics
• GCSE Urdu