

	Introduction to the exams process
	Who's who
	The exams process
	Exam marking
	Awarding grades and results
	Access and fairness
	Standards

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Who's who

There are five awarding bodies offering general qualifications: three unitary awarding bodies in England (AQA, Edexcel and OCR), the WJEC in Wales and CCEA in Northern Ireland. The Joint Council for General Qualifications (the JCGQ or the Joint Council) represents all five awarding bodies and publishes details of procedures and arrangements common to these awarding bodies.

The three awarding bodies in England are regulated by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA), WJEC is regulated by the Qualifications, Curriculum and Assessment Authority for Wales (ACCAC) and CCEA is the self-regulatory body in Northern Ireland. There are many other awarding bodies also offering accredited qualifications.

This section applies to general qualifications: GCSEs, GCSEs in vocational subjects, GCE and VCE A levels. The regulatory authorities draw up criteria for the accreditation of qualifications to the national qualification framework. These cover areas such as general principles, qualification-specific issues and subject-specific content and can be found in the published Arrangements for the statutory regulation of external qualification in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. The awarding bodies then draw up specifications (syllabuses) to meet these criteria. ..

Documents to download

> GCSE, GCSE in vocational subjects, GCE, VCE and GNVQ code of practice 2002/3 (388kb)

Other websites

> AQA
> Edexcel
> OCR
> WJEC
> CCEA
> ACCAC
> JCGQ