Edexcel has outperformed the two other main boards in England in its quality of marking, seeing fewer enquiries about results leading to grade changes in 2005 across all its qualifications.

Managing Director, Jerry Jarvis, welcomed the improvements and said: “We continue to achieve year on year improvements in key areas. In 2006 we are clear where we again want to see improved service to students, their teachers and their parents.

“A big issue for us in 2005 was still late entries – where schools do not let us know until late in the cycle or even the day of the examination, that a student is being entered. Clearly this means that we have no examiner ready to mark the paper: these totalled over half a million scripts (566,233) in 2005.

“Edexcel is committed to continuous improvements and in 2006 the increased number of ePen (onscreen) marked papers will see even more accurate, secure and faster marking from Edexcel and we expect to deliver another improved performance in 2006,” Jarvis added.

Service 2 (post results review of marking by second examiner) GCE
Edexcel - From 18.7% in 2004 to 9.59% in 2005
AQA - From 14.5% in 2004 to 13.85% in 2005
OCR - From 7.9% in 2004 to 8.79% in 2005

Service 2P (priority) GCE
Edexcel - From 25.4% in 2004 to 8.27% in 2005
AQA - From 15.3% in 2004 to 14.23% in 2005
OCR - From 8.4% in 2004 to 10.3% in 2005

Service 2 GCSE
Edexcel - From 22.4% in 2004 to 25.9% in 2005
AQA - From 26% in 2004 to 25.8% in 2005
OCR - From 16% in 2004 to 17.99% in 2005

The general qualifications entry volume increased to 1,222,972 subject entries for GCSE and 1,929,776 unit entries for GCE/VCE for 2005 vs 700,605 entries for 2002.

In Summer 2005, Edexcel:

• Processed 6.3 million entries (Unit, Award and Modular) – up from 6.2 million in Summer ‘04
• Resolved 199,000 ineligible entries
• Captured over 7.3 million marks onto the system (including coursework) – up from 7.2 million in Summer ‘04
• Processed over 4.2 million scripts – up from 4.1 million in 2004
• Processed nearly 3 million scripts using the onscreen marking system (69% of all scripts) – up from 1 million in Summer ‘04.

The anomaly for Edexcel is the GCSE Service 2 where marks changed rose from 22.4% to 25.9% - but these levels are on a par with the other boards: 25.8% for AQA and 17.99% for OCR (and 19.6 and 24.3 for the WJEC and CCEA).