Once you’ve decided you’re going to embark on a i/GCSE as a home educator, the first job is to work out which exam board you’re going to use. This can feel really daunting at first but, as you do more GCSEs, it soon becomes easier. Promise!
What are the different exam boards and what’s different about them?
To answer this question, I’ll focus on the system in England and Wales as that’s what I know about and use.
These are the main UK-based exam boards which offer UK GCSEs:
- AQA (the largest and most used board in schools)
- Pearson Edexcel (often just referred to as Edexcel)
- WJEC/Eduqas
- OCR (run by the University of Cambridge)
Boards offering international GCSEs (iGCSEs) in the UK are:
- CAIE (Cambridge Assessment International Education) or “Cambridge” for short
- Pearson Edexcel (often just referred to as Edexcel)
All exam boards have to align with the national curriculum set by the Department of Education but their approach, topics and methods of assessment can vary significantly. All GCSEs, however, are viewed equally, regardless of which board they are attained from.
What is an iGCSE?
There are some GCSEs that are not available at all to private candidates e.g home educators or adult learners. There are also some GCSEs that involve NEAs (non-examined assessments) which can be either coursework or practical components that have to be signed off as completed. It’s often very hard (and expensive) for private candidates to find exam centres or board-approved tutors who are prepared to do this.
For these GCSEs, therefore, you can instead take international GCSEs (iGCSEs). These are at the same level, usually have very similar content and are treated on the whole like GCSEs. They are just 100% exams. A major advantage of iGCSEs is that they usually have two sittings a year; one in summer and one in autumn (the latter originally aimed at those countries with a Jan to Dec academic year).
The most common subjects to do as iGCSEs are: biology, chemistry, physics, geography and English language.
We have chosen to also do the following as iGCSEs:
- Environmental Management (EM) – this is only available as an iGCSE
- German – we prefer the syllabus and the fact that we’ll need only two visits to the exam centre rather than three with AQA.
- Maths – we want the option of an autumn sitting to spread out the exams and the iGCSE allows you to use your calculator in both papers (GCSE has one non-calculator paper).
So, how do I go about choosing an exam board for each subject?
These are the things I factor in when deciding which board to use. For us, we have no SEN issues to consider and no need for access arrangements. These could potentially have a significant influence on your choice of board but I have no experience on these so I won’t discuss these here.
- Exam centre availability and cost
For many home edders, the main driver for selecting a certain board is which boards their local exam centres accommodate. Some boards, like Cambridge (CAIE), have fewer centres nationally and most non-commercial exam centres (like private schools) don’t do language exams because of the speaking element. So, seeing what your local exam centre options are is vital. The best source of information on this is your local Facebook home ed group and word of mouth around your local home ed community.
We’re really lucky in that we have a local private school which accommodates private candidates for all boards except Cambridge (CAIE). They do Edexcel iGCSEs too for both summer and autumn sittings. They don’t however do modern languages. They charge a flat fee of £180 (as at Sept 2024) per subject which is really reasonable.
For languages and Cambridge subjects, we have to venture further afield and use Tutors and Exams, a commercial exam centre. It’s still under an hour to get there but it’s the cost which is the big sting. They charge quite a bit more for each subject; for languages, we’ve been charged a whopping £350 per subject. This is so expensive but we have no other choice!
So, because of our local exam centres, we try and avoid the Cambridge board if possible.
I should add that a local school who takes private candidates doesn’t necessarily have to offer the subject themselves. The important thing is that the school is registered with that particular board and then in theory they can accommodate any subject done by that board. Both our girls will be sitting GCSE Latin at a private school which hasn’t had a classics department for years. It’s very unusual for private candidates to sit in with the school’s own pupils anyway. - Timing of exam sittings
GCSE exams are held in summer each year. Most iGCSEs (but you will need to check for each subject) are held twice a year, in summer and in autumn. If you’re wanting to spread out your exams, then doing a mixture of GCSEs and iGCSEs will help with this.
If you’re learning a subject over a year but suspect you might not be ready for a June exam, with an iGCSE you could then delay things and sit the exam in autumn instead. With a GCSE, however, you’d have to wait for another year until the following summer.
This is the main reason we’ve gone with the iGCSE for Maths. We’re aiming for autumn 2025 but, if we’re not ready, we can simply sit it in June 2026 instead. We’ve got a lot more flexibility with the iGCSE. - Syllabus
The next major factor to consider is the syllabus. The formal name for this is the “specification” or “exam spec” for short. These are available on all the boards’ websites on the subject-specific pages.
Top tip – read these initially on screen rather than print them out – they are very long documents! They pretty much all follow the same format and include the same types of information. Again, once you’ve read a few, they’ll become very familiar to you.
Rather than having to search through each of the board’s websites, thankfully us home edders have access to the most amazing resource – the HE exam wiki. This goes through every subject and lists out the boards that can be done as home edders, including a summary of each exam spec and the main resources available. Any research done on GCSEs must include the HE exam wiki!
As noted above, each subject has core requirements set down by the government but then each board will have slightly different topics for achieving these requirements. History is a good example. The topics covered are different across each of the boards so if you’re more into medieval history, you may prefer one board over another which has more modern history. Another example is Psychology GCSE: some boards allow you to choose which topics to do whilst other boards only have compulsory topics.
It therefore comes down to preference over which topics you want to study. It’s vital you sit down with your student and look through all the options. This can be really time consuming if you’re open to any topics but I was lucky in that both my girls always had strong opinions over what they wanted to do!
Some subjects are only done by one board so no decision is required for these. For us that’s been OCR GCSE Classical Civilisation, OCR Ancient History and CAIE iGCSE Environmental Management. They’re nice and easy! - Recent syllabus changes
This is something I always look out for. Some subjects have a huge number of past papers to use. The longer the syllabus has been in use, the more papers there will be available. When a syllabus changes, these past papers can become less useful or more difficult to use – although it obviously depends on how much the syllabus has changed. We never use a board in a sitting where it is the first time a syllabus has been examined. We did AQA Spanish GCSE but we changed to Edexcel iGCSE German for this exact reason as Peggy would have sat AQA in the first sitting under a new syllabus which involved a significantly changed format to the exams. - Exam paper style
This can be make or break for some people, especially for those with SEN to consider. The main issues I consider are:- Number of exam papers e.g AQA History has two papers but Edexcel has three. This can be really important if:
- your exam centre is far away or if you need a hotel stay the night before
- your child would benefit from more, shorter exams
- your child gets very anxious and so you want as few exams as possible
- Length of exams
- A good example here is English Language. One board has just one three-hour exam and that’s it. For some that would be perfect to get it over and done with in one sitting but, for some, this would be absolutely awful. You know your child best!
- How content is split across the papers
- We love discrete paper content. This is where Paper 1 contains one set of topics and then Paper 2 contains different topics to Paper 1. We’ve found this much easier for revision in the lead up to the exams and in the awkward gap between the two papers.
- Style of exam paper
- Are there multiple-choice questions?
- Are there lots of short questions or longer essay questions?
- Is there a separate booklet with reading material in or is it integrated into the exam paper you write on?
- Do you like the look of the exam paper format-wise? Some people struggle with certain fonts or hate lines under questions for writing and prefer to answer in a separate answer booklet with blank pages.
- Equipment allowed
- GCSE Maths has three papers, and in one you are not allowed to use a calculator. In Edexcel iGCSE Maths, you are allowed to use a calculator in both of the two papers. It’s another reason we opted for the iGCSE.
Have a good look at past exam papers on screen to see what the exam papers contain for each board. I’ve dismissed some boards straight away from doing this. Let your student look too as they should have an opinion since they’re the ones sitting them!
- GCSE Maths has three papers, and in one you are not allowed to use a calculator. In Edexcel iGCSE Maths, you are allowed to use a calculator in both of the two papers. It’s another reason we opted for the iGCSE.
- Number of exam papers e.g AQA History has two papers but Edexcel has three. This can be really important if:
- Resources available
Some boards are more popular than others and this is reflected in the number and variety of resources available. If you pick a less-common board, you’ll be limited with the textbooks available and other resources like board-specific YouTube videos and CGP workbooks. Have a look on Amazon and on YouTube and you’ll soon see which boards have the most available. The HE exam Wiki is also super helpful here with links to the main resources.
The resources provided by the exam boards themselves are also really important. Some boards don’t like to make things easy for private candidates with resources hidden behind teacher-only access accounts (Cambridge is guilty of this) whereas some boards provide an amazing array of help (Edexcel is fantastic for GCSE Business). Take a good look around the exam-board websites to see what you can actually access and what is available. Some boards provide example answers at different levels so you can see what they want to see for each grade; these are invaluable for essay-based subjects and if you’re not using a tutor. - Tutor support or course providers
If you’re not wanting to go it alone with self-study, you may want to use a course provider or a tutor instead. In this case, they will most likely dictate which board you’ll have to do but of course you can pick the tutor/course based on which board you want to do. We did this with Psychology. We didn’t really mind which board we did as we liked them all and so we went with OCR because that’s who a trusted tutor used. - Date clashes
The exam boards release their timetables for future sittings pretty early (more than a year in advance for some boards). If you’re sitting several subjects at once, it’s not uncommon to end up with clashes where two exams are at the same time. If you’re having a dilemma between particular boards, then the exam dates may swing it for you. Once the timetables are released (I always find out from Facebook groups) I’d recommend looking up your exam dates so you know early on about clashes or issues.
The timetable may also affect which options you choose for a particular subject, where options are sat on different days. From the provisional June 2026 exam timetables I can see that Peggy has three exams in one day; that’s not great! One of these is an option we’ve chosen for Latin. We’ve therefore changed this option to another Latin paper which is on another day. She’ll now have two rather than three exams on one day which is a lot better!
As we’re having to use the considerably more expensive exam centre for languages, if these exams clashed with another subject, we’d then have to also do that subject at this same centre. That would result in a much bigger bill. Thankfully that’s not a problem for us in 2026 but it may make me reconsider the board if it was. - Board reputation
Sadly, this has become more of an issue post-Covid. Some boards simply have bad reputations when it comes to the quality of exam marking. One particular board who has received nationwide and extensive criticism in recent years has been AQA, especially with regards to both English Literature and Language. There has been lots of talk of re-marks and amended results coming back anything up to three grades higher. I’m on several teacher Facebook groups and there’s been a lot of discussion over major marking discrepancies and huge variety in marking between the different topics and papers. It appears many schools are now looking to move away from AQA to other boards who have more consistency.
I must admit, this has put me off AQA a lot but we’ve already chosen them for English Literature and History. I’m really hoping they’ll get their act together before June 2026! - Additional factors
The above factors are enough for me to consider but some people go further and look at:- pass rates and grade boundaries for each board and how they compare
- what exam board local colleges use for A Level, to then use the same for GCSE
- the cost for re-marks in the event of you wanting the grades to be checked
Choosing GCSE exam boards is hard!
There are a lot of factors to take into consideration. You can see on my blog post “Which GCSEs are we doing and when?” which boards we’ve chosen for each subject. I’ve then explained how we’ve reached that decision on each subject page. It is a very personal choice, with so many factors to take into consideration, but sometimes it’s helpful to see how others have arrived at their choice.
I don’t pretend to be an expert but I’ve now chosen boards for all the 17 different subjects we’re doing at GCSE level so I’ve been through this process many times. As always, if you’re struggling, simply overwhelmed by the choice or just want to run your decision passed someone who’s been where you are now, then please just send me a message. I’m always happy to help!
