Changes to 2021 exams for GCSE Computer Science

Tuesday 6 Oct 2020

We’ve been working hard to make the relevant changes to our qualifications following Ofqual’s decisions on summer 2021 exams, so here are the changes you need to know about for GCSE Computer Science.

These changes only apply to the 2021 exam series.

GCSE Computer Science (8520)

We emailed schools and colleges in July to say that Ofqual had agreed that we can relax some of the rules around the authentication and supervision of the summer 2021 Programming Project.

In July we also said that you’ll still need to submit your centre Programming Project Declaration and time log for summer 2021. As an update we can confirm that the Programming Project Declaration, time log and Candidate Record Form (CRF) are no longer required for 2021.

To recap – these are all of the changes that you need to know about for the Programming Project for summer 2021:

• you can share the Programming Project task with your students for them to work on outside of the classroom
• the 20 hours set aside in the timetable for the conduct of the Programming Project can now include those hours which are currently being conducted at home
• you won’t have to send us a sample of your students’ work for monitoring purposes in 2021
• you don’t need to submit a Programming Project Declaration, time log and CRF for your students in summer 2021.

There are no changes to the specification content and no changes to either the Paper 1 or Paper 2 assessment.

We know that you’ll want to know more about the changes for next summer. We’ll publish further information in the coming months with updates about the summer 2021 exams.