Exams are as inevitable as death and taxes, but who exactly is behind them? Who writes the questions and decides what’s fair and what isn’t? And who delivers those life-changing marks?
Exams in the UK are set by a mysterious selection of acronyms known as “exam boards”, which have a surprisingly interesting history.
Also now known as “awarding bodies”, exams boards first emerged in the mid-19th century when universities such as Oxford and Cambridge started to provide exams for the first schools to offer them.
While exam boards often have regional roots, they have merged and evolved over the years, leaving us with some dominant big players.
Despite exam boards in England being required to follow strict guidelines from Ofqual (the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation) to regulate standards and ensure parity, the layout, content and format of exams varies from board to board.
What is the role of an exam board?
One obvious task is that they set the exam questions, carefully calibrating them to be as fair as possible.
Over the years, though, boards have come under attack on numerous occasions when students, teachers and experts have claimed that questions have been too hard or unfair.
For example, in 2024 the Institute of Physics said that one A-level paper from exam board AQA was “unreasonably difficult”, while teachers criticised the same board for an “obscure” English literature GCSE extract.
In addition to setting the exam papers and fielding complaints, the boards arrange the marking of the papers and set “grade boundaries” to ensure that standards are the same from one year to the next.
Boards also handle the exam appeals process. If students are unhappy with the outcome of their appeals, however, they must go to the regulator, Ofqual.
The biggest UK exam boards
AQA
AQA has been around for more than 20 years, since the merger of the Associated Examining Board (the AEB) and the Northern Examinations and Assessment Board (NEAB) in April 2000.
It is the largest exam board for GCSEs in England, with a total of 1.4 million students take its GCSE, AS- and A-level papers and vocational qualifications each summer. The board, run as a charity, covers England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Find out more about AQA
Edexcel
Owned by the publisher Pearson, Edexcel is the only privately owned exam board in the UK. It was formed in 1996, following the merger of the Business and Technology Education Council (BTEC) and the University of London Examinations and Assessment Council (ULEAC), which administered GCSEs and A levels. It is one of the biggest boards in the UK alongside AQA.
Find out more about Edexcel
OCR
OCR was established in 1998 following the merger of the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) and the Royal Society of Arts Examinations Board (RSAEB), an exam board offering vocational qualifications since the 1850s.
It provide GCSEs and A levels in more than 40 subjects and offers over 100 vocational qualifications, working with over 8,000 examiners and assessors.
Find out more about OCR
WJEC
The Welsh Joint Education Committee (WJEC) was established as a consortium of Welsh local education authorities in 1948, replacing the Central Welsh Board.
It provides exams to schools and colleges in Wales and Northern Ireland under its own name and, from 2014, under the Eduqas brand in England.
SQA
As of August 2025, the Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) remains the awarding body for Scotland’s exams, such as Nationals, Highers and Advanced Highers.
In December 2025, the SQA is set to be replaced by a new body, Qualifications Scotland. The Scottish government committed to reforming the SQA in the wake of the 2020 pandemic grading scandal, as well as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s report on Scotland’s Curriculum for Excellence, published in 2021.
This report found “misalignment between CfE’s aspirations and the qualification system” in the senior phase of secondary schools. New qualifications are set to be introduced in Scotland in 2032.
CCEA
Established in 1994 in Belfast, the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) develops and delivers GCSEs, AS levels and A levels, and provides curriculum support and assessments, for schools in Northern Ireland.
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