Notice: Regulatory actions against Pearson

Overview

On 27 June 2022 we issued Pearson with:

A Notice of Intention to impose a Monetary Penalty of £1,200,000 in respect of Pearson’s reviews of marking arrangements in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019
A Notice of Intention to impose a Monetary Penalty of £150,000 in respect of Pearson issuing incorrect ‘short course’ certificates in 2017 and 2018.

These documents are published above along with:

An Undertaking and action plan provided by Pearson on 8 June 2020 which provided Ofqual with assurance that Pearson’s arrangements for reviews of marking for the autumn 2021 exam series and beyond have been, and will be, compliant with the Conditions of Recognition.

Further details of these matters are set out below.

Notice of Intention to impose a Monetary Penalty in respect of Pearson’s reviews of marking in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019; and an Undertaking and Action Plan from Pearson in June 2020

During 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019, Pearson failed to ensure that all of its reviews of marking in respect of its GCE and GCSE qualifications were carried out in their entirety by a person who had not been involved in the original marking. In some of these cases, Pearson also failed to ensure that the reviews of marking were carried out by someone who had no personal interest in the outcome of the review.

These failings affected an estimated 46,797 reviews of marking, in part or in whole, over a 4 year period. This represents around 9% of all of the reviews carried out by Pearson each year. Around 97% of the affected reviews involved individual, anonymised answers that were reviewed at an item level on-screen. The remaining approximately 3% involved reviews of whole scripts.

These failings occurred as a result of the fact that:

(a) Pearson did not retain a Workforce of appropriate size in that it did not retain sufficient numbers of examiners to enable it to carry out its reviews of marking in a way that was compliant with the Conditions.
(b) Pearson did not maintain appropriate systems of planning and internal control in circumstances where -(i) Pearson failed to take steps to alter its processes to ensure compliance with the Conditions of Recognition when changes were introduced in 2016, and
(ii) Pearson had been knowingly allocating reviews to examiners with previous involvement in the original marking and failed to put adequate controls in place to guard against the risks that the Conditions seek to avoid,

(c) Pearson failed to take all reasonable steps to identify the risk of an incident occurring which could have had an Adverse Effect. Pearson did not identify the risk of non-compliance, even when the issue was specifically drawn to its attention by Ofqual in 2018. Opportunities to identify and remedy the problem were missed, resulting in a further year of non-compliance in 2019 with 11,645 affected reviews that could have been avoided.

There is no evidence to show that these failings resulted in Learners or Centres receiving the wrong outcome. Nearly all affected reviews (around 99%) were conducted by Pearson’s most senior examiners who had received training. Their reviews were monitored and sampled during the review process to ensure marking standards were maintained.

However, these were serious breaches of Conditions that are integral to the effectiveness and purpose of the system of reviewing marking. The failures therefore have the potential to seriously undermine public confidence in the review of marking system, and the qualifications system more generally.

Pearson has provided an undertaking to Ofqual in which it has agreed to:

(a) compensate affected Centres in the form of credit notes to the value of £320,510 to represent the income that Pearson received from affected reviews; and(b) complete the actions set out in its Action Plan to ensure compliance with the Conditions for all future exam series.

Ofqual is assured by the undertaking and Action Plan that Pearson’s arrangements for reviews of marking for the autumn 2021 exam series and beyond have been, and will be, compliant with the Conditions of Recognition.

Ofqual has decided to give notice that it intends to impose a Monetary Penalty of £1,200,000 on Pearson for these breaches.

This decision should be viewed in the context that Ofqual accepted a Settlement Proposal from AQA in January 2020 to pay a Monetary Penalty of £350,000 in respect of similar failings with its review of marking arrangements. Ofqual’s Enforcement Committee considered that the Monetary Penalty it is intending to impose on Pearson should be significantly higher than that imposed on AQA for the following (summarised) reasons.

(a) This case is factually more serious than the AQA case;(b) Pearson is not entitled to any settlement discount on the level of the penalty;(c) Pearson’s undertaking to pay compensation to Centres does not include a figure to reflect its avoided compliance costs;(d) Pearson’s size and turnover is significantly greater than AQA’s.

A Notice of Intention to impose a Monetary Penalty was served on Pearson on Monday 27 June 2022. Pearson was given until 25 July 2022 (28 days) to make representations in response. Pearson made representations on 25 July 2022 and these are being considered. Interested parties now have the opportunity to make representations on the proposal. Any representations must be made in writing and sent by email to [email protected] and must be received before 4pm on 28 September 2022. Ofqual’s Enforcement Committee will consider the case again after 28 September 2022 and will consider any representations that have been received before making a final decision.

Notice of Intention to impose a Monetary Penalty in respect of Pearson issuing incorrect ‘short course’ certificates in 2017 and 2018

This case relates to the issuing of incorrect certificates by Pearson, specifically certificates it issued for short course GCSEs.

The underlying facts and breaches in this matter were accepted by Pearson.

In summary, Pearson accepted that it issued inaccurate qualification certificates for some GCSE qualifications in 2017 and 2018.

The affected certificates omitted the words ‘Short Course’ to reflect the learners’ attainment of a shortened rather than ‘full’ GCSE. The error affected certificates issued to learners who were assessed only for short course GCSEs. Where learners had taken a mix of full and short course qualifications, the learner received an accurate certificate.

Pearson discovered the issue in October 2018 when a centre informed it of the error on 2018 certificates. The error was not identified directly by Pearson because the affected certificate type was not included in the quality assurance checks it had put in place (that is, Pearson’s sampling process did not include certificates for learners that had only entered for a short course.).

In all, Pearson accepted that it had issued:

(a) 5,285 incorrect ‘short course’ certificates in 2017.(b) 3,076 incorrect ‘short course’ certificates in 2018.

The following number of incorrect certificates were recovered by Pearson:

(a) 2017 – 2,014 certificates.(b) 2018 – 2,950 certificates.

Pearson accepted that the root cause of the incident was due to a failure to recognise that all certificate types were not being sampled for errors after it had made changes to their format. Pearson’s quality assurance processes had failed to detect the issue over a prolonged period and the issue only came to Pearson’s attention after the issue was identified and raised by a centre.

Ofqual identified that reasonable steps would have included ensuring it was sampling all certificate types and having periodic reviews of all certificate types to prevent incidents occurring over a prolonged period. Pearson accepted that it did not take all reasonable steps to prevent the issue of incorrect certificates.

Pearson attempted to recall the incorrect certificates to mitigate any Adverse Effects arising from the issuing of incorrect certificates. Ofqual expressed concerns with Pearson’s incident management. Pearson accepted that some decisions and actions could have been initiated and implemented more promptly than they were, to better mitigate any Adverse Effects that might have occurred.

Ofqual has decided to give notice that it intends to impose a Monetary Penalty of £150,000 upon Pearson.

A Notice of Intention to impose a Monetary Penalty was served on Pearson on Monday 27 June 2022. Pearson was given until 25 July 2022 (28 days) to make representations in response. Pearson made representations on 25 July 2022 and these are being considered. Interested parties now have the opportunity to make representations on the proposal. Any representations must be made in writing and sent by email to [email protected] and must be received before 4pm on 28 September 2022. Ofqual’s Enforcement Committee will consider the case again after 28 September 2022 and will consider any representations that have been received before making a final decision.

Glossary of technical terms

Below is a list of technical terms used in these documents and an explanation of their meaning.

Event notification

General Condition B3 requires awarding organisations (exam boards) to promptly notify Ofqual when it has cause to believe that any event has occurred or is likely to occur which could have an Adverse Effect.  This is done through an ‘event notification’.

ePen

ePen is the ‘electronic Performance Evaluation Network’. An online system which displays questions from scanned scripts for examiners to access and mark from home.

Legacy qualifications

GCSE and GCE qualifications were reformed in 2019. ‘Legacy’ refers to qualifications that pre-date those reforms.

ROM or ROMM or ROMMA

Sometimes it is referred to as ROM (Review of Marking), ROMM (Review of Marking and Moderation) or ROMMA (Review of Marking, Moderation and Appeals).

AA

AA means Assessment Associate (that is, examiners, not permanent Pearson staff).

TL

TL means Team Leader

PE

PE means Principal Examiner.

Two Notices of Intention imposing Monetary Penalties on Pearson and an Undertaking and Action Plan from Pearson in respect of issues between 2016-2019 Two Notices of Intention imposing Monetary Penalties on Pearson and an Undertaking and Action Plan from Pearson in respect of issues between 2016-2019 Ofqual – Activity on GOV.UK Read More