We are currently doing some research around our psychology course offer and if you are a current teacher of psychology at GCSE or International A level we would love to hear from you. Please complete our short survey so we can get in touch. This is aimed at teachers in international centres outside the UK, but UK based teachers of GCSE or UK A Level psychology can also use it to register interest in future teacher consultations.
Psychology
Subject update |
Sun Oct 05 23:00:00 UTC 2025
October 2025 Psychology subject update
Hi everyone,
Your October Psychology Update Is Here! This month’s update brings you key dates, training news, and some brilliant free resources to enrich your teaching.
As always, if there’s anything I can help with, get in touch using the contact options below.
Best wishes,
Tim Lawrence
Psychology Subject Advisor
This update includes:
- Key dates: including training opportunties in November and January entries for IAL psychology.
- Have your say: let us know if we can contact you as part of our research around our psychology course offer.
- Training and professional development: Exam Insight training coming up in November.
- Free teaching and learning resources: the BPS Teacher Toolkit and Research Digest blog, Tutor2U Psychology in the News, and new Maths in Psychology and Supplementary Topic Support resources for A Level Psychology.
- FAQs from psychology teachers: specifications, IAL entry rules and resources.
| 17 October | Entry deadline for IAL January 2026 series |
| 12 November | A Level Psychology Exam Insights training |
| 18 November | GCSE Psychology Exam Insights training |
| 12 December | Access to Scripts deadline |
Final exam timetables for the summer 2026 exam series are available on our webpage linked below along with those for International A Level exams in January 2026.
Sign up for our free Exam Insights training for GCSE and A Level Psychology using the link below, and look out for information on International A Level Exam Insights training in my next update. These sessions share feedback from senior examiners on the June 2025 series - including lessons from specific questions and broader trends.
They’re a great way to sharpen your understanding of what examiners are looking for and help students feel more confident going into their exams.
We are continuing to add to our free teaching resources for A Level Psychology teachers, with a new 'Maths in Psychology' worksheet on correlation and cause, and a new pack in our 'Supplementary Topic Support' series. These are based on articles from the British Psychological Society's Research Digest blog, with the latest looking at psychopathy and offending.
The BPS Teacher Toolkit is a great selection of free resources for psychology teachers, ready to download and use in the classroom. The latest to be uploaded offer guidance to teachers on adolescence and toxic online content, and teaching ideas for schema theory and the use of storytelling in teaching about Milgram's research.
The BPS Research Digest is a great recommendation for students who want to deepen their understanding of psychological issues and research practices, with short and accessible summaries of current research.
These free activities are a great way to make psychology teaching feel 'current' and relevant, and can help students develop the key exam skill of applying their knowledge of theories and research evidence to novel real-world situations and issues.
Our IAL psychology specification has been updated for first assessment in the upcoming January 2026 series. The changes are limited to the teaching of the psychodynamic approach for unit 2, one 8 mark question on unit 3 which can now assess any of the issues and debates, and minor changes in wording to clarify that synoptic questions can be answered with material from any topic. Read about these changes in my November 2024 update. The course textbooks published a year ago are current and were written with this update in mind.
Our UK A Level specification has been updated to show the increase in the time allowed for paper 1 and paper 2 - now 2 hours and 15 minutes. There are no changes to the content of the specification.
There has been no change to our GCSE psychology specification.
For International A Level psychology the units can be taken in any exam series (they are available in January as well as the May/June series each year), and can also be spread over a longer time period than two years if needed.
There is no time limit other than the 'lifetime of the qualification' (at some point the current course will be replaced by a new one but no date has been set for this yet, and exams for the current course will be available for a number of years). This means that students can resit units the year after they finish their course if they want to improve their grades.
The units can be split over four different exam series, or can be taken all together in one series. They can be taken in any order, but the IA2 units (units 3 and 4) have synoptic questions which require knowledge of the IAS units (units 1 and 2).
For linear qualifications like the UK A Level and GCSE in psychology grade boundaries are set on the total raw mark.
For modular qualifications like IAL psychology where candidates take their exams over different exam series a system is needed to ensure that each unit contributes fairly to the overall grade despite small variations in the challenge of individual exam papers, and therefor variation in their grade boundaries - this is the Uniform Mark Scale or UMS.
UMS grade boundaries are fixed and are the same for all IAL qualifications: 80% for an A, 70% for a B, 60% for a C, 50% for a D and 40% for an E. An A* grade is awarede for an average of 90% of the UMS marks for the IAL units (units 3 and 4 for psychology), as long as the candidate has 80% (the A grade threshold) across all units (all four for psychology). Counterintuitively this means that for an A* grade 70% of the UMS from the IAS units (units 1 and 2 - a low B) are sufficient.
The raw mark grade boundaries are quite different to these and vary series by series. The raw mark on a given exam is converted to a UMS mark out of 80 (for units 1 and 3) or 120 (for units 2 and 4) using a conversion table which examiners set when they set the grade boundaries for each paper.
The web page linked below allows you to convert specific raw marks to UMS marks for a given past exam paper. The 'all scores' tab allows you to view how every raw mark on that paper was mapped onto a UMS mark.
Yes, our qualification page has one edited by Ali Abbas listed along with the Pearson textbook on its resources page. Here's a link to the second edition:
Psychology GCSE for Edexcel: Revise and Supplement
Subject advisor
Tim Lawrence
Psychology and international Science
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+44 (0) 344 463 2535
(Teaching Services team | Mon - Fri, 8am - 5pm GMT)
Subject updates
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November 2025 Psychology subject update
Hi everyone,
Your November Psychology Update Is Here! This month’s update has important news for UK A Level Psychology teachers about improvements to the 'formulae and statistical tables' section at the start of exam papers (and a reminder about the timing changes previously shared). There are also recordings of the September training events for GCSE and IAL Psychology, and more free resources published for A level Psychology along with a new survey for teachers in international centres to inform the development of future qualifications.
Best wishes,
Tim Lawrence
Psychology Subject Advisor