Finding an exam centre
From HE Examinations
Contents |
Exam Boards
- AQA: information for private candidates, including a list of exam centres
- Edexcel: information for private candidates
- CIE: information for private candidates, including a list of exam centres
Please note that the lists of centres are often inaccurate. People often resort to phoning round all the schools and colleges in their area to find out if they will take external candidates.
Independent Schools and Colleges
Often, independent schools and colleges are your best bet for finding an exam centre near you. When I was looking in the South West, I emailed every independent secondary school within an 80 mile radius! Of these, about five responded positively. The website for the Independent Schools Council lists every independent school by area.
The Oxford Open Learning site has a list of all the schools on their books that have accepted private candidates to sit GCSEs in the past.
Centres in England
Shropshire
We phoned the LA and, although they tried incredibly hard to refer us back to Edexcel, when it became clear that I was happy to stay on the phone all day insisting that Edexcel had referred us to the LA they gave a huge sigh and passed me onto Family Services, who were very sympathetic and passed me onto the Schools Effectiveness Unit, who were extremely sympathetic and phoned schools in the area, until they found an exam officer who would help. As it turns out, we cannot sit Edexcel exams at this school as they are not a registered centre – but we are sitting two AQA GCSEs there. Meantime, we discovered a local private school who are an IGCSE centre who are happy for us to sit the IGCSEs there. Both schools will be charging at cost – we have been given the ball park figure of no more than £60 per exam.
South East
In Central London:
In Aylesbury: Kip McGrath Centre
In Newhaven, East Sussex, Tideway School 01273 517601. Exams officer, Fran Mortimer is very helpful.
Lancing College in West Sussex has accepted private students in the past for IGCSEs.
South West
- Bristol: http://www.igcseexams.co.uk/
Centres in Northern Ireland and Eire
- Holywood: Rockport School do AQA and CCEA and will happily accept home-educated children for these exam boards.
- Newtownabbey: The Free Presbyterian School will accept home-educated children. It is a CCEA centre and is currently applying to be an Edexcel centre for IGCSEs.
- Dublin: At the moment, as far as I know, you have to go to the tutorial centre in Dublin to do IGCSEs. Please update this if you know otherwise.
Centres in Scotland
Fettes College, in Edinburgh, can accommodate some exam takers. It's also worth contacting the exam officers at Merchiston Castle School and St Leonards in St Andrews. All these schools offer GCSEs, which may now be difficult to take as an independent candidate. Fettes also offers some IGCSEs.
