Annual Review
Director General's report
Mike Cresswell
Young people deserve an education that equips them to live happy, fulfilled and productive lives in a rapidly changing world. We in AQA are doing all we can to support schools and colleges in the essential work of equipping our young people for the future.
New GCEs
Earlier this year, all 53 of our new GCE A-level specifications, for teaching starting in September 2008, were accredited by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). We are offering by far the biggest range of subjects of any awarding body, reflecting our commitment to diverse educational provision and choice for teachers and learners. Later in this Review you can read about how that same commitment is also being expressed in our development of new Diplomas and the new AQA Baccalaureate (AQA Bacc). We believe that choice of examination provision helps teachers to provide courses that are motivating and engaging for their students and therefore make a real contribution to raising standards of achievement.
Raising standards of achievement
Also with the aim of helping schools and colleges to raise standards of achievement, all our new specifications are accompanied by endorsed electronic teaching and learning materials, text books, onscreen assessments and so on, published by our publishing partner Nelson Thornes.
Revising GCSEs
Following the new A-levels, new GCSEs are currently in development for first teaching in September 2009. With so much curriculum change imminent in the next few years, we are significantly expanding our programme of professional support to teachers to help them maintain and improve the standards reached by their students. You will find more detail about this support work later in this Review.
Technological advances
Alongside these curriculum developments, we continue to meet the highest standards in our operational work. We delivered accurate and timely results for all our candidates again this summer and the most recently published figures from our regulator, QCA, show that we have the top score on all five of their key indicators of awarding body performance. But we are not resting on our laurels and you can read in this Review about some of the ways in which we are harnessing modern technology to improve still further the service we provide for those who take our examinations.
In both assessment technology and the curriculum, AQA is defining the future of education and assessment, with the sole intention of helping teachers to prepare their students for life in a challenging and ever-changing world.