How does AQA deliver high-quality assessment? - High-quality assessment process

Oct 20, 2026

AQA explains how high-quality assessment is built through a research-informed process spanning months or years before students enter the exam hall. The booklet describes how exam specifications are developed from Department for Education criteria and accredited standards, how mark schemes and question writing support effective discrimination and validity, and how culturally accessible, real-life contexts are phrased to measure intended skills. It also covers innovative assessment approaches, examiner reliability monitoring, and the balance between strict marking guidance and professional judgement.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryExam

FormatPDF

Pages8

Reading Time20 min

AccessFree to download

The basics

The exam specification and mark scheme design

Fair assessments

Adaptive comparative judgement and EPQ

Valid assessments

Real-life contexts and accessibility

Relevant assessments

Tasks across skills and subjects

The human element

Marking schemes, compliance, and judgement

Getting the right result Building quality into the assessment process Find out more at: [cerp.org.uk](cerp.org.uk) Centre for Education Research and Practice (CERP) How does AQA deliver high-quality assessment? Each summer around 25,000 examiners mark 7.5 million of our GCSE and A-level examination papers. Ensuring that students receive the right results is of paramount importance, and the process begins months – or even years – before the candidates enter the exam hall. Research evidence shapes every step of the assessment process: AQA has an on-site team of academics based at its Centre for Education Research and Practice (CERP) and their work informs question paper and mark scheme design to build in quality from the earliest stages. All the research papers referenced in this booklet are available to download [from](from cerp.org.uk)[ cerp.org.uk](from cerp.org.uk). The basics The exam specification – previously called the syllabus – is based on criteria provided by the Department for Education and accredited by Ofqual. It is written by our team of subject experts and forms the basis for our question papers and mark schemes. Using our own data, we have shown that the design of mark schemes can impact on how effectively we can identify good responses (Effective discrimination in mark schemes, Anne Pinot de Moira) . When there are major changes to GCSEs and A-levels, each qualification needs a new specification and work starts on this over a year before it is accredited. At each stage of development, we share our proposals with teachers and wider stakeholders, and feed their comments back into the development process. Once we have decided on the best option to take forward, we begin to create the detailed content for the specification. Fair assessments We draw on a wide range of research to ensure that our question papers test the full spectrum of candidates’ abilities. This enables examiners to establish the relative CENTRE FOR EDUCATION RESEARCH AND PRACTICE Skills that are hard to assess Employers and businesses increasingly expect young people to leave school with skills such as working collaboratively in groups and problem solving. These skills, though valued by the education world, are difficult to measure: options including peer and selfassessment raise validity issues. We have investigated innovative approaches to assessments that are designed to elicit evidence on how well students can solve problems and apply knowledge. For example, we have examined the reliability and validity of approaches such as ‘adaptive comparative judgement’ to the assessment of complex performances. We are continuing to explore such approaches in relation to assessing the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), a qualification valued by many universities as an indication of students’ aptitude for the kinds of independent research and analysis skills that are needed for success in higher education. (Using adaptive comparative judgement to obtain a highly reliable rank order in summative assessment, Claire Whitehouse and Alastair Pollitt; Testing the validity of judgements about geography essays using the adaptive comparative judgement method, Claire Whitehouse.) difficulty of questions across an individual paper, as well as all the other assessments that make up the qualification. It’s important that qualifications allow candidates to perform well in some questions and less well in others, and still achieve a total mark that accurately represents their performance. AQA’s research team has been investigating this practice since the late 1980s (Setting common examination papers that differentiate, Frances Good) and our findings have informed both the inception and development of GCSEs. Valid assessments We closely monitor how questions are written to be certain that they test what we mean to test. Evidence has shown that questions that use real-life contexts (for example adding up the total cost of items in

FAQs

How does AQA use research in its assessment process?

AQA uses research evidence to shape each step of assessment, including question paper and mark scheme design. An on-site team at the Centre for Education Research and Practice (CERP) informs how quality is built from the earliest stages.

What makes assessments valid in AQA’s approach?

Validity is supported by ensuring questions test the intended skill rather than understanding of the surrounding context. Real-life contexts must be phrased in a particular way, culturally specific concepts should be avoided, and topics should not alienate particular audiences.

How does AQA balance consistency with examiner judgement?

AQA creates strict marking schemes for subjective tasks and continuously monitors marker compliance. At the same time, the examiner is given scope for professional judgement to decide the mark that best reflects the quality of the work.

Oct 20, 2026

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