Private candidate exam centres: state of the nation Autumn 24
Home educators know private candidate exam centres can be hard to come by - but what are the figures?
I recently spent a couple of days compiling a spreadsheet containing all the private candidate exam centre information from the Home Ed Exams Wiki, and the JCQ private candidate exams centre list (including previous versions saved from 2021 and 2022). Yes, weekends are fun round our house.
First - what are these lists?
When you home educate, there typically comes a time when you want your child to take some GCSEs, or at least to find out whether this would be possible. (There’s no legal requirement to take GCSEs, and not all home educated children do - but they gate entrance to post-16 routes, and many want to.) This could be something you slowly investigate as your child gets older, if you’ve been home educating for a long time, or it could be something you need to sort out quickly following a deregistration later on in years 9, 10 or 11 - something which many families do.
Home education support groups are very used to new members asking about how to register a child to take GCSEs. You might even think there would be a simple answer and a single place to go and find a suitable exam centre, whether that’s a private commercial centre, or a ‘friendly’ school that supports local private candidates. Sadly that’s not quite the case. However there are two places to start looking - the exams Wiki and the JCQ list, and that’s where I’ve collated this information from.
There are very likely to be other centres that *have* accepted private candidates in any given year - occasionally schools will support a recently deregistered pupil to sit a few exams as a private candidate; or there may be a local or personal connection so a school does it ‘just this once’. A very few LAs have particular local arrangements for home educators - often quite limited, but helpful as they go. But if you don’t have those options, these lists are your go-to to find somewhere that might help.
So, what’s available, in actual numbers?
Currently, there are 168 centres on the JCQ list, and a further 27 on the exams Wiki but not listed by JCQ (some of these have not been verified as recently active, others are very well-used centres).
However, 69 of these have a limited offer (for example, only English and Maths, or only the same exams as the school is sitting which cuts out some core subjects like Sciences, or only a few spaces available each sitting). Several explicitly say they cannot support access arrangements; and 4 of the currently well used centres have given notice that they are withdrawing support from next year.
These figures are from across the whole of the UK, although the vast majority are within England.
This compares to 3,500 secondary schools in England; and as of Autumn 2023 figures from the DfE, there are 32,000 EHE children in years 10 and 11 who would potentially want to take GCSE exams (all indications are that this figure will be higher now).
Outside of a few well established centres, the exam centre population is also very unstable, with only 49 centres that have appeared on all three JCQ lists that I have data for.
There are some centres, and that’s great. But there aren’t very many, particularly in more rural areas of the country.
In addition, home educators have to pay for accessing exams. Surveys in 2022 and 2023 showed that of 579 exam entries, the majority cost over £150 per subject (just for exams), and prices are rising. Costs become significantly higher, both for exams and for tutoring, where NEA (non exam assessment, such as coursework or practical assessments) is involved. A large exam centre has current costs for GCSE subjects at:
English Literature (exam only): £240
English Language (speaking endorsement): £280
French (speaking assessment): £380
Music: £425 (due to the NEA, candidates must also work with a tutor, with normal costs of around £400 for a year of group classes once a week).
Science: only available as GCSE if carrying forward practicals (usually taken as IGCSE).
As you can see, NEA, or anything other than an exam paper considerably increases costs for a subject, and in some cases makes it impossible. Additional papers also increase costs - for example at the same centre GCSE Mathematics (3 papers) is £290, whereas International GCSE Mathematics (2 papers) is £240.
This is not price gouging - it is a realistic reflection of the costs involved. It’s not hard and fast (many schools also charge admin fees which makes them a similar cost), but schools that offer private candidate support are often significantly cheaper, as costs like buildings, exam officer and SENCO time are already covered; whereas a commercial centre needs to pay for these from the fees they charge. Access arrangements should not be charged for (although sometimes they are, in various forms - another story for another day), but the costs are not recoverable from anywhere other than general fees.
In addition, there are indirect costs, primarily travel to an exam centre - the exams access surveys of 2022 and 2023 showed that of 249 candidates, 26% had required an overnight stay due to travel to their exam centre, roughly corresponding to the number who indicated the centre they used was over 50 miles away. Some candidates were travelling over 100 miles to find a centre able to accommodate their needs or subject (subjects with NEA are also available at fewer centres, as are access arrangements). This is needed per paper - so an exam with three papers may require three hotel stays (and meals, and diesel), instead of two for two papers. This is a big factor in the common home educator preference for International GCSE Maths over GCSE Maths.
The upshot is - finding an exam centre as a home educator can be hard, and expensive, and options vary significantly depending on where you live. This difficulty has the most impact on those with a low income or additional needs, and those who deregister late on with less time to adapt.
The JCQ list should be updated to reflect 2025 centre availability shortly; my spreadsheet awaits…