Five awarding bodies, better known as exam boards, cover England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Your school, college or sixth-form centre chooses a syllabus from one of the exam boards for each subject.

The exam boards are:

AQA (Assessment and Qualifications Alliance)

CCEA (Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessments)

Edexcel or examzone

OCR (Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations)

WJEC/CBAC (Welsh Joint Education Committee)

The exam boards are overseen by the regulatory authorities.

The regulatory authorities are:

In Wales:
ACCAC (Qualifications, Curriculum and Assessment Authority for Wales)

In Northern Ireland:
CCEA (Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessments)

In England:
QCA (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority)

As regulators, it's their job to monitor standards and the quality of examining across the exam boards and make sure you get a fair deal.