Examination boards in the United Kingdom

Examination boards in the United Kingdom (sometimes called awarding bodies or "awarding organisations") are the examination boards responsible for setting and awarding secondary education level , such as GCSEs, Standard Grades, A Levels, Highers and vocational qualifications, to students in the United Kingdom.

Until the mid-1990s, academic exam boards and vocational accreditors were run very much as separate organisations. In more recent times, this distinction has been removed, with all the term 'awarding bodies' now being used. This article focuses on the contemporary and historical awarding bodies that set academic exams in state schools. In everyday terminology, these organisations are still referred to as 'exam boards'.

Broadly speaking, the UK has always had two separate school systems: one for England, Wales and Northern Ireland; and one for Scotland. As a result, two separate sets of exam boards have been developed.

Unusually, England, Wales and Northern Ireland have several exam boards, with schools and colleges able to freely choose between them on a subject-by-subject basis. Currently, there are seven exam boards available to state schools:

Though the exam boards have regional roots (see below), they are all nationwide, though the CCEA is not very active outside of its native Northern Ireland. Most offer a range of qualifications, though not all boards offer every qualification in every area (Edexcel, for example, offers a great deal of vocational qualifications, while the WJEC and OCR are the only boards to offer A Level Film Studies). In particular, the ICAAE is very specialised, offering only a small number of business-related GCSEs and is far and away the smallest Ofqual-approved exam board for state schools. CIE is another exception: it is traditionally an international exam board, but now offers the Cambridge Pre-U and Cambridge International Certificate to state schools.

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