Correspondence

Letter to heads about Advance Information on GCSE, AS and A level exams

Published 10 February 2022

Applies to England

Since I wrote to you in December, many of you will have enabled students to undertake a successful series of formal assessments and exams for the January series. I know speaking with students that they really appreciate the efforts you have gone to so that they can show what they know and understand in this way.

The exam boards have published advance information on the content of most GCSE, AS and A level exams in summer 2022 on their public websites. As you will be aware this is part of an unprecedented package of support for students, including changes to non-exam assessment, providing formulae and equation sheets in some exams and more generous grading, to help make exams as fair as possible this year. There is advance information for all GCSE, AS and A level subjects, with the exceptions of art and design (because they do not have written exams) and GCSEs in English literature, history, ancient history and geography, which have some optional topics or content instead.

I wanted to re-state that because of the variety of specifications covered, the different conventions within subject domains, and how those are assessed, advance information will be different for each subject. As such students may well benefit from your guidance in how to best make use of it. Please do get in touch with the relevant exam board if you have any questions about the advance information.

2022 arrangements

In case you are uncertain about any of the arrangements for your students this year more information on the 2022 changes to exams, changes to non-exam assessments and guidance on contingency arrangements can be found on our website. For vocational and technical qualifications awarding organisations have already been allowed to make adaptations to assessments and qualifications, where they need to, due to the pandemic. Ofqual and the Department for Education (DfE) set out these arrangements last summer. We’ve also created a guidance page on our website of what is available for each subject that we hope will be useful for parents.

Contingency

In line with the contingency arrangements for GCSEs, AS and A levels, teachers should take the advance information into account when deciding how to assess their students, to generate evidence to inform a Teacher Assessed Grade (TAG) in the unlikely event exams are cancelled. We advocated a proportionate approach in our November 2021 guidance and reiterate that here. Contingency assessments should, ideally, help rather than hinder qualification preparation and I encourage you to trust your judgement about whether you have sufficient evidence.

For the latest information, please refer to our rolling update.

There is also a message to students below, which I would be grateful if you could share with candidates at your school or college and any private candidates you may be supporting.

Yours faithfully,

Dr Jo Saxton Chief Regulator

Dear students,

In my job as Chief Regulator of qualifications I get to meet many students, teachers and parents from different parts of the country. Speaking to students like you, who are getting ready for formal exams and assessments, it’s clear to me that you want life to get back to normal and that you would like as much certainty about what is going to happen as possible.

For that reason the exam boards have, this week, published for you ‘advance information’ on their websites. This is subject by subject, specification by specification, specific outlines of the focus of questions across many of your summer exams. We’ve added a tool on our website which shows you what is available for each subject.

These materials are just one of the ways we are working to make sure that, despite the disruption caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, your exams and formal assessments are less daunting.

You will also get formulae sheets for GCSE maths exams and updated equation sheets for GCSE physics and combined science exams, so you won’t have to memorise as much.

As well as advance information and formulae sheets, you will be supported by generous grading, which will provide you with a safety-net to protect you from just missing out on a grade.

We will also publish videos, infographics and other materials to help those of you who have been prevented from ever sitting a formal exam, to know what that feels like.

You can find more information at the following official sources:

• Rolling update
• Ofqual Instagram
• Ofqual blog

Best wishes,

Dr Jo Saxton Ofqual Chief Regulator