Education CommitteeFurther written evidence submitted by Pearson (Annex E)

The practice outlined below is set down by the regulators and therefore common to all awarding bodies. The attached document is the guidance issued to us by Ofqual last year.

We share with the regulators all our outcomes data for GCSE and GCE weekly throughout the summer examinations series, with all outcomes reported by a given date in the first week of August.

Alongside the outcomes data we also state whether the actual awards we have made fall inside or outside of “tolerance” against predicted awards. Predicted awards are based cohort’s performance based its previous performance. For GCSE, we use KS2 data to draw up predictions. For AS and A level we use GCSE performance.

Awarding bodies and the regulator meet formally early in August to pool data and ensure Maintenance of Standards and comparability in the first week of August. Ofqual provide the awarding bodies with documentation which includes all our data for this meeting.

As far as we are aware, the regulator does not make this documentation publicly available.

We could (and would) share own outcomes and tolerances data publicly, but that of other awarding bodies would not be ours to share.

March 2012