27 Aug 2021
Today’s update includes information on the November 2021 exam series, including school-assessed grades, the guidance available on our website and details on the Exams Officer webinars taking place next week.
Finally, to help us prepare for 2022 we would be very grateful for your feedback on the June 2021 series. If you have not done so already, you can answer our short survey.
November 2021
As we confirmed recently, we will run our November 2021 exam series as scheduled where it is safe and permitted to do so. All information and guidance on the November 2021 exam series will be published on our website. We encourage students to continue to prepare for their examinations and non-examined components.
For countries or regions within countries where directives from national or local authorities mean exams cannot take place, we will switch to school-assessed grades. We will ask you to use the same overall approach for setting school-assessed grades as we used in the June 2021 series.
We will publish more detailed guidance about how to collect evidence to determine school-assessed grades for November 2021 in the week of 6 September. This will include guidance on how many multiple-choice papers you can include as evidence and answers to questions that schools asked us when collecting evidence and setting school-assessed grades in June 2021. If you have any specific questions in the meantime, please get in touch.
Supporting you to run exams in November 2021
We have a range of support and guidance available for the November series. Our guide to running exams, for exams officers and heads of centre, will help you run November 2021 exams safely and securely. Use this, as well as the guidance in our current Cambridge Handbook, when planning the exams in your centre.
On our website you can find detailed information and guidance on:
Webinar - How to run exams for the November 2021 series
Wednesday 1 September
We will be holding free webinars for exams officers who are running exams in November 2021. The webinars will provide detailed information on our exam regulations and provide information about managing your exams including dealing with the unexpected and what to do at the end of each exam. There is also an opportunity for you to ask us questions.
Help us prepare for the June 2022 series
To inform our plans for June 2022, we would like to learn about the experiences of schools that entered candidates in the June 2021 series. We are also seeking feedback from all schools planning to enter candidates in June 2022 on a proposed portfolio of evidence model to replace exams if necessary.
If you haven’t already shared your experiences of using school-assessed grades with us, we encourage you to complete our survey to let us know what you think.
Stay in touch
View our latest updates on our Covid-19 information pages.
If you have any questions, you can review our frequently asked questions or contact us via the Help website.
For British Council Partner Schools or Cambridge Associate schools, please contact your local British Council representative or Cambridge Associate.
