England, Wales and Northern Ireland
Unusually, England, Wales and Northern Ireland have several exam boards, with schools and colleges able to freely choose between them on a subject-by-subject basis. Currently, there are seven exam boards available to state schools:
- AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance)
- CIE (University of Cambridge International Examinations)
- CCEA (Council for the Curriculum, Examinations & Assessment)
- Edexcel (Pearson Edexcel as of April 2013)
- ICAAE (International Curriculum and Assessment Agency Examinations)
- OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations)
- WJEC (Welsh Joint Education Committee)
Though the exam boards have regional roots (see below), they are all nationwide, though the CCEA is not very active outside of its native Northern Ireland. Most offer a range of qualifications, though not all boards offer every qualification in every area (Edexcel, for example, offers a great deal of vocational qualifications, while the WJEC is the only board to offer A Level Film Studies). In particular, the ICAAE is very specialised, offering only a small number of business-related GCSEs and is far and away the smallest Ofqual-approved exam board for state schools. CIE is another exception: it is traditionally an international exam board, but now offers the Cambridge Pre-U and Cambridge International Certificate to state schools.
Schools and colleges have a completely free choice between the boards, depending on the qualification offered. Most schools use a mixture of boards for their GCSE qualifications, with a similar situation existing at A Level. (It is worth noting that a school using, say, OCR for GCSE History is perfectly free to pick a different board for A Level History.)
Read more about this topic: Examination Boards In The United Kingdom
Famous quotes containing the words northern ireland, wales, northern and/or ireland:
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—Bernadette Devlin (b. 1947)
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—Charles, Prince Of Wales (b. 1948)
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—Northern Irish Tourist Board. quoted in New Statesman (London, Aug. 29, 1969)
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—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)