There already is an excellent article on the Justin Craig website on how a parent can support their child on a day-to-day basis with ideas on how to revise and support revision(here).
This article takes a more strategic overview, explaining how exam boards work and how the planning for exam revision is assisted by the exam boards by publishing, well in advance, the exam timetable for the coming year.
Exam Boards
Many parents and those not involved in the world of education are surprised that there is more than one writer of exams. Many think that there is an exams department within the Department for Education whose job it is to write exams and therefore there is one single version of GCSE English Literature or A Level Physics.
This is not the case. There are several exam boards in the UK: AQA, OCR, EDEXCEL, WEJC/EDUQAS (Known as the “Welsh Board” but very popular in the north of England),CCEA ( Northern Ireland’s exam board, but also used by some schools within GB).
The exam boards are overseen by the Joint Council for Qualifications to ensure consistency of standards. In other words, to ensure no exam board is seen as “too hard” or “too easy”.
School Selection of Exam Boards
These exam boards are businesses. Schools are charged per pupil, per exam sat. Each school spends many thousands of pounds each year on exam fees. My last school paid approx. £30,000 annually for 100 GCSE students. Schools with more pupils, who also have a sixth form doing A levels, will obviously spend a great deal more on exam entry fees.
Schools and departments within schools have a great deal of flexibility on which exam board they choose for their pupils and for their individual subjects. So, for example the pupils may be doing WJEC/EDUQAS for English Language and English Literature and AQA for Maths. It is very common for a school to be working with several different exam boards, based on the desires of individual subject leaders.
Justin Craig staff are very experienced in working with the various exam boards. Many Justin Craig staff are examiners and have been for many years.
Which Exam Board has your child’s school selected – and for which subject?
It is important to know which exam board you child is doing for each subject. Each exam board has different specifications and slightly different Assessment Objectives (AOs).
Take for example GCSE English Literature. Dependent on the exam board, a pupil may study: A Christmas Carol, Romeo and Juliet, Blood Brothers, Anthology of Poetry.
For another exam board the literature might be: An Inspector Calls, Animal Farm, Macbeth, Anthology of Poetry (different to other exam boards).
English teachers have a great deal of choice as each exam board lists various plays and novels that they can choose from.
That example is just for English Literature at GCSE! Add to the mix History with its many, many historical periods, Religious Education with the various faiths and philosophies to choose from, Drama with its lists and lists of plays. The sciences and maths are slightly less complicated, but some exam boards ask for different things.
It is therefore vital for parents to know which exam board their child is doing for each subject.
How does a parent do this?
It is simply a straightforward matter of asking your child’s subject teacher or head of subject.
All schools have contact details for individual staff, if they do not then a generic email should be available to be forwarded to the relevant teacher.
Don’t worry about being seen as a nuisance for asking for this information. You are not. Staff will find it refreshing to have a parent taking such a close interest. In the long run it makes their task so much easier.
Exam Board Resources
Once you have discovered which board covers which subject, you will have an enjoyable time looking at the relevant exam board website and seeing all the resources on there, in particular past papers.
Whilst past papers are a valuable resource, I would resist the temptation of printing off a load of them and asking your child to “have a go”. Such an approach could be damaging:
- If they have not been prepared by the school to know what a past paper looks like, and,
- The school may have planned to set up a series of mock exams and revision sessions based on past papers, so check with your child’s teacher first.
The Exam Timetable
A quick word about the exams timetable. Despite there being several different exam boards, they do get together and decide which exam is on which day. So, for example, no matter which exam board you child is studying for maths the exams for papers 1,2 and 3 will be on the same day.
Publication
The timetable is published in the Autumn Term at the end of October or earlier. From the published timetable you can get a steer on which exams are early and which are late. For example, Religious Education tends to be one of the first exams and Physics one of the last (though check carefully each year).
Exam tabling & Revision
Knowledge of what is timetabled and when, will help your child (and you!) to fine tune the revision plan as the exam season approaches. As exams are completed, a printed off version of the exam timetable with your child’s exams highlighted and crossed off as they are completed can be a great boost for morale!
Exams Duration
There is usually a six-week period for exams from May though to June. There are never any exams after the end of June, as Northern Ireland Schools finish then (lucky them!). There is a break for the summer half term when there are no exams. Justin Craig run courses during this period, and they can be very useful to introduce a laser focused approach on exams and subjects yet to be set. The JC website has full details of these courses.
Finally, in the words of Corporal Jones: “Don’t panic”. We at Justin Craig are the exam experts and have well over forty years’ experience of successful exam revision. Many of our staff are examiners past and present and ALL are subject experts who know what they are doing and what the secret to success is. Give us a call and we can help.
Good luck!