Decision

OCR: Special conditions: May 2014

We have placed special conditions on OCR to make sure its processes and procedures for new GCSEs (graded 9 to 1) work as intended.

Applies to England

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On Friday 21 August 2015 condition A5.7 was revoked. This has now been removed from the attached conditions document.

Awarding organisation	Issue	Action taken	Case status
Oxford, Cambridge and RSA Examinations (OCR)	Development, delivery and award of GCSE (9 to 1) qualifications	Imposed special conditions (at recognition)	Open

On 23 May 2014, we accepted OCR’s application to be recognised for the new GCSE (9 to 1) qualifications.

At the same time, we decided to impose special conditions on OCR for those qualifications. This is because:

GCSE (9 to 1) qualifications are important qualifications: they will be used for the purposes of students moving to higher education and employment and for school league tables
the new GCSEs are also fundamentally different from existing GCSE qualifications (graded A* to G) that OCR currently provide
as part of its application for recognition OCR explained how it proposes to implement the development, delivery and award of GCSE (9 to 1) qualifications (its ‘business transformation programme’ and ‘implementation plan’) and these processes and practices have not yet been fully tested in operation
the successful completion of OCR’s business transformation programme and implementation plan is extremely important to students and others who might use these qualifications
to maintain standards and public confidence in GCSE qualifications, we want to closely monitor OCR’s business transformation programme and implementation plan and any changes to them

We will review these conditions on or before 1 October 2016, and will remove them when they are no longer necessary.

Published 23 May 2014
Last updated 24 August 2015 + show all updates