Ofqual has fined Pearson, the FTSE 100-listed education company, over £2 million for a series of serious breaches in examination standards that could have affected tens of thousands of students. The penalties include £750,000 for each of two cases and £505,000 for a third, relating to GCSE English language exams, A-level spoken Chinese, and an online English proficiency test.
In the case of the English proficiency test, Pearson allowed about 5% of candidates to take the test online at home in 2023, instead of at a secure centre. This enabled other individuals to sit the test on a student's behalf, bypassing remote invigilation safeguards. Although Pearson identified the incident and revoked 9,910 results, it admitted it should have detected the malpractice sooner and reported it to Ofqual.
The GCSE English breach involved the risk of inconsistent grading standards, while the A-level Chinese breach related to issues with how questions were set and marked, making the assessments inappropriately demanding for non-native speakers. Amanda Swann, Ofqual’s executive director for delivery, said: “These fines reflect the serious nature of Pearson’s failures as well as our commitment to protecting students’ interests and maintaining public confidence in our qualifications system.”
Pearson has now been fined seven times by Ofqual, including a £1.2m penalty in 2022 for failures with reviews of marking arrangements between 2016 and 2019. In a statement, Pearson said: “We take responsibility for the issues that affected GCE A-level Chinese, GCSE English Language 2.0, and our legacy PTE Academic Online Test at different times between 2019 and 2023. Our actions at the time did not meet regulatory requirements or the high standards that learners and educators rightly expect from us. For each of these cases, we conducted a comprehensive review of our processes and have implemented robust improvements.”
