How to start planning for your Summer entries work

As we approach the Christmas break, the last thing you probably want to think about is the work you need to do in January for your summer exam entries. But, it’s worth deciding on your plan of action now and completing a few key tasks to help you feel confident and prepared.

Here are some tasks you might want to start thinking about:

• Make sure you know which exam boards and specifications your teachers are using for each subject. Your centre may already have these listed somewhere.
• Find out which tier of entry candidates are likely to sit for tiered subjects, such as GCSE Maths, Science and Modern Foreign Languages. It is worth finding out this information now as it will save you time in making changes later. You can amend entries if a learner’s tier changes - we will send you an email about this later in the cycle.
• Set up your summer exam series in your centre MIS. How to do this will depend on which MIS your centre uses. Let your line manager know if you haven’t received training on how to do this. Our entry codes book gives you the codes you will need to enter for our subjects; for History and Religious Studies, you can use our useful entry code checkers History Codes Checker and Religious Studies Entry Codes Checker as there are many codes to choose from.
• Set up A2C. If you intend to send your entry files (known as EDI files) using A2C you need to install it on the computer that will be used. A2C requests Access Keys for each awarding body and you can find these for AQA by logging into AQA Centre Services, then go to Pre-Exams, then Get A2C Access Key. This process is simple to set up and you only need to do it once.
• Allocate candidate numbers and UCIs (Unique Candidate Identifiers) to your learners. This may have already happened, but if not, there should be a function in your MIS to do this. If a learner has already sat exams elsewhere (at school before going to college, or at a previous school) it’s very important that their original UCI from their previous centre is used when entering them for exams and that a new UCI is not allocated. The UCI is used by awarding bodies to keep learner’s records in one place. If a new UCI is allocated to a learner that already has one, your entry file may come back as showing an error.
• Consider how you’re going to get the entries that you’ve created checked and agreed by subject departments before you send them to the exam boards. For example, you might do this by sending them entry lists or giving them view-only access to their entries in your centre MIS.

The entries area of our website has lots of information to help you.