Anna Price to Ben Cuff: Compliance review of Malpractice in GCSE, AS and A level statistics in England

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Sent from: Office for Statistics Regulation

Sent to: Ofqual

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Dear Ben,

Compliance review of Malpractice in GCSE, AS and A level statistics in England

We have completed a compliance review of Malpractice in GCSE, AS and A level statistics produced by Ofqual against the standards of the Code of Practice for Statistics. These statistics are currently published as official statistics. Our review considered both the Malpractice statistics as well as current statistical practice in Ofqual more generally.

Based on the findings of our review, we conclude that the Malpractice in GCSE, AS and A level statistics are underpinned by strong quality assurance procedures and are responsive to the needs of users – for example, in response to user needs, Ofqual introduced new breakdowns of plagiarism offences to distinguish cases involving the misuse of AI from those that do not. However, there is scope to improve the reporting about quality, as well as user engagement and accessibility. We have made four recommendations which aim to address these, including publishing more information on quality to support user understanding and providing more detail on the public value of the statistics.

We expect Ofqual to provide a public update on its progress against our recommendations by December 2026. In the longer term, should Ofqual wish to pursue accreditation of the statistics we would be happy to discuss the best timing for an assessment.

I am grateful for the constructive engagement from your team throughout the review and hope our findings inform the ongoing development of these statistics.

Yours sincerely,

Dr Anna Price

Compliance review of malpractice in GCSE AS and A level statistics