Exam board Pearson has been fined £2 million by Ofqual for “serious” rule breaches which affected tens of thousands of students taking language qualifications – including GCSE resitters.
The fines are for breaches affecting three different qualifications between 2019 and 2023, including its GCSE English language 2.0 and A Level Chinese.
Pearson, which has now been fined seven times by exams regulator Ofqual, has accepted responsibility and apologised to students affected.
The exam board has agreed to a £750,000 fine for “fail[ing] to identify and effectively manage a risk of inconsistent grading standards” between its GCSE English language qualification and a new GCSE English language 2.0 qualification.
This is despite Ofqual highlighting the risk in 2022 and 2023.
The 2.0 language exam was introduced by Pearson in 2022. It was aimed at post-16 students who had not achieved grade 4 “standard pass”, including those taking resits. It had 23,165 student entries in 2023.
When standards were realigned with GCSE English language in summer 2024, students “received correct but unexpectedly lower results”, said Ofqual, which “undermined public confidence” and led to complaints.
Pearson previously defended its decision to “significantly” hike up the grade boundary for the GCSE English 2.0 resit exam after “shocked” college leaders complained of lower-than-expected pass rates and threatened legal action.
‘Multiple issues’ with Chinese A Level
Pearson has also received a £505,000 fine for “multiple issues” related to the Edexcel A Level in Chinese. This included spoken exams in Mandarin and Cantonese.
Ofqual reviewed assessments from 2019, 2022 and 2023, and found “multiple issues with how questions were set, and responses marked, that were inconsistent with requirements”.
Pearson failed to resolve these issues even after teachers and others raised concerns, said Ofqual.
Around 12,000 students were affected, particularly non-native Chinese speakers who were “disproportionately disadvantaged by the assessments being inappropriately demanding for them”.
Pearson has also been fined £750,000 for an English language test that enable international students to meet university entrance requirements. An online version, which has now been discontinued, reportedly made it possible for other people to sit the test on students’ behalf.
‘We take responsibility’ – Pearson
Pearson has issued an apology.
“We take responsibility for the issues that affected GCE A Level Chinese, GCSE English Language 2.0, and our legacy PTE Academic Online Test at different times between 2019 and 2023,” said a spokesperson.
They accepted Pearson’s actions “did not meet regulatory requirements”.
“For each of these cases, we addressed the issues, conducted a comprehensive review of our processes, and have implemented robust improvements.
“We apologise to all those affected. We have learned from these incidents and continue to invest in our systems, processes, and training to ensure our qualifications are delivered to the highest possible standard.”
Ofqual said its enforcement panel took mitigating factors into account when deciding on the penalties. This concluding included Pearson accepting the breaches and entering into settlement agreements
Amanda Swann, Ofqual’s executive director for delivery, said the fines “reflect the serious nature of Pearson’s failures as well as our commitment to protecting students’ interests and maintaining public confidence in our qualifications system”.
“Students must be able to trust that their results, and those of their peers taking the same qualifications, accurately reflect their performance, in line with appropriate standards. Students’ work must also be their own.
“This action is necessary to deter Pearson and other awarding organisations from similar failings in future.”
Pearson has now been fined seven times by Ofqual. The highest penalty issued was in 2022, when Pearson was fined £1.2 million for failures with reviews of marking arrangements between 2016 and 2019.
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