Correspondence

Letter to schools: Advance information

Published 9 December 2021

Applies to England

Advance Information for GCSE, AS and A level exams in 2022

I write to update you about the nature of the advance information, on the content of some GCSE, AS and A level exams, which the exam boards will be publishing by 7 February 2022.

First, however, may I take this opportunity to thank you, and your staff and colleagues, for everything you are doing to support your students as they prepare for qualifications in these still challenging times.

As you are aware, the first ever publication of advance information in general qualifications is a key adaptation to examinations, aiming to support students and teachers in focusing revision for exams. It is intended to make sure that we are being as fair as possible to students given the disruption they have experienced, and many continue to face, due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The advance information spans over 300 qualification specifications. In normal times specifications for the same subject contain some differences between boards, within clearly defined parameters.

The advance information will reflect this to some degree as each of the materials has been tailored to the relevant subject and specification. In each case it has been carefully designed to support the same purpose: to provide appropriate guidance to teachers and students to focus revision. It is important for you and your students to know this process has been done with great care, following a set of common principles, to make sure the approach is as fair as possible across subjects and exam boards. This is explained in the exam boards’ guidance.

In some cases, for example, the information will provide a list of topics that will be the focus of the exam, or parts of it. In other cases, the information will identify a section of a set work (such as a text), and the extract used in the exam will be taken from this smaller section. Other approaches have been taken elsewhere. The differences you will notice are appropriate given the variety of specifications, and subjects being examined. Taken together, the information across all specifications you offer is quite detailed, although there will be a limited amount of information for each subject teacher to engage with.

To support you and your teams to become familiar with the approach for the specifications you teach, the JCQ and boards will be sharing scene-setting information via their public websites today. The outlines they are publishing are prior to full publication of the actual materials, which will also be disseminated via their public websites, by February 7 next year.

Exceptional circumstances

These are unprecedented exam arrangements to respond to the impact of the pandemic, and I want to assure you that Ofqual has set the principles that underpin advance information and has worked with the boards on applying them to each specification. These principles aim to allow the exam boards to balance fairness, flexibility and certainty, with the need to ensure that the qualifications remain valid, so that students can be confident in the grades they achieve. It will not be possible, for example, to know what questions will be asked in exams from reading the advance information.

Vocational and technical qualifications (VTQs)

Adaptations to exams and the use of advance information will vary more for VTQs, depending on the nature of the VTQ and timing of the assessments. For that reason it is important to please check with your awarding organisation on what arrangements are being put in place.

To conclude, when this information is available, your colleagues will wish to familiarise themselves with the relevant details that relate to the specifications they teach. I am extremely grateful to all those who will be involved in enabling this new approach to work well in the interests of fairness to students, and of course for the continued tireless work of you and your colleagues to teach the curriculum and prepare students to take their exams and other formal assessments next summer.

May I ask that you pass this information on to your teaching staff and exams officers so that they are aware of the exam boards’ publications and the nature of them. The exam boards will publish both the scene-setting information and the advance information itself in a way that will be accessible to students. Private candidates would otherwise be disadvantaged.

It may also be of use to your colleagues that oversee exams and other assessments to check Ofqual’s rolling update, from time to time, for the latest news and information on arrangements for 2022.

With my best wishes to you for the forthcoming Christmas break.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Jo Saxton Chief Regulator, Ofqual