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Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
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Explore the people, places, events, achievements, struggles and stories that shaped our journey.
Movements, leaders, victories and the continuing fight for equality.
Innovation, patents, science, technology and world-changing contributions.
Pioneers, champions, Negro Leagues, records, activism and excellence.
Meet the people whose lives, choices and achievements shaped the journey.
Black towns, communities, institutions and places where history happened.
Moments that changed communities, movements, institutions and the nation.
In 1968 Shirley Chisholm became the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress. In 1972 she launched a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, breaking another political barrier.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
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| Formation | 1996[1] |
|---|---|
| Merger of | ULEAC and BTEC |
| Type | Examination board |
| Headquarters | Strand, London, England |
Official language | English |
Chair | Mary Curnock Cook CBE |
Parent organisation | Pearson plc |
| Website | qualifications |
Edexcel (also known since 2013 as Pearson Edexcel)[2] is a British multinational education and examination body formed in 1996 and wholly owned by Pearson plc since 2005. It is the only privately owned examination board in the United Kingdom.[3] Its name is a portmanteau term combining the words education and excellence.
Edexcel regulates school examinations under the British Curriculum and offers qualifications for schools on the international and regional scale. It is the UK's largest awarding organisation offering academic and vocational qualifications in schools, colleges and work places in the UK and abroad. It is also recognised internationally.[4] In 2019, Edexcel was the focus of significant controversy following a leak of an A-level examination.[5]
Edexcel was formed in 1996 by the merger of two bodies, the BTEC (Business & Technology Education Council) and ULEAC (University of London Examinations and Assessment Council).[1] In 2003, the Edexcel Foundation (the charity that managed the board) formed a partnership with Pearson plc to set up a new company called London Qualifications Ltd, which was 75% owned by Pearson and 25% by the Edexcel Foundation.[1] London Qualifications Limited changed its name to Edexcel Limited in November 2004 and is now known colloquially as Edexcel and formally as Edexcel Pearson - London Examinations.
In 2005, Edexcel became the only large examination board to be held in private hands, when Pearson plc took complete control.[1] Edexcel subsequently received investment from their new parent company.
Edexcel also offers IAL, known as International Advanced Levels. It is offered only to schools outside the UK.[6] It is considered by the UK NARIC (the National Recognition Information Centre for the United Kingdom) to be of a comparable standard as the GCE Advanced Level.[7] In addition, Edexcel provides the Edexcel International Diploma (ID) which involves the study of 4 A-Levels (3 full A-Levels and 1 AS-Level in either General Studies or Global Development).[8][9] The British curriculum offered by the Edexcel International board is among the most taught at International Schools along with the curricula offered by Cambridge International Examinations and, the International Baccalaureate Organization.[10]
On 3 April 2013, Pearson rebranded Edexcel and all of its exams 'Pearson Edexcel', in line with a name change that added the prefix 'Pearson' to all of its brands.[2]
As Edexcel is the only privately owned examination board in the UK, questions have been raised on whether the examination board is acting in the best interest of students, or solely as a profit making business, due to the wide range of Edexcel-endorsed text books published by Pearson, the international multi-billion company which owns the board.[11]
In 2007 it was reported that teachers using Edexcel Music examinations were allowing students to listen to confidential listening paper CDs several days before the examination, by abusing the trust given by the exam board to only check for technical issues. Other exam boards do not allow the practice of checking discs, with AQA specifically instructing teachers not to open the packages containing the CDs before exams.[12]
In 2013, the loss of an A-Level C3 Mathematics exam being delivered to an international school in Amsterdam led to a replacement paper being published for the Summer examination series. However, 60 students took the original paper due to it mistakenly being handed out in two UK and two overseas centres, while the replacement paper was taken by 34,000 students. The replacement paper was criticised for its unusually high difficulty level, and there were concerns that the students taking the original paper would be unfairly marked.[13]
In June 2015, students across the United Kingdom who had taken an Edexcel GCSE Maths paper expressed anger and confusion over questions that "did not make sense" and were "ridiculous", mocking the exam on Twitter.[14][15][16] On a Sky News segment, presenter Adam Boulton answered one of the paper's 'hardest' questions with a former maths teacher.[17][18] As a result, GCSE students across the UK signed a petition made by a candidate requesting that the exam board lowers the grade boundaries as the examination was too hard.
An additional petition was started by a 17-year-old student requesting to "Ensure the representation of women on the A-Level Music syllabus." The petition asks that music composed by women be added to the Edexcel A-Level Music syllabus which "has a total of 63 different set works from a variety of musical genres and eras." After six days, the petition had over 1,800 signatures and was featured in The Guardian.[19]
In June, Paper 3 of the Mathematics GCSE (Higher Tier, 1MA1/3H) appeared to contain an exam question which was published in an AQA (another British exam board) Further Mathematics textbook. The exam question had the same diagram, values and answer as the question in the textbook. Pearson Edexcel said that they were investigating how this might have happened.[20][21]
After students sat the Paper 2 of the new specification Mathematics A-Level (9MA0), many students complained online expressing that the difficulty of the exam was too high and unlike anything seen in past papers. One online petition to lower grade boundaries was signed by thousands of users. Before results day, Pearson Edexcel released a video addressing students about the difficulty concerns and mentioned that independent experts did confirm that the exam was "fair and valid". They acknowledged the first two questions of the exam were more difficult than anticipated, and also claimed that they would make "small adjustments" to "improve the experience" of the exam for future students.[22]
Further controversy ensued after the Paper 3 of the new specification Mathematics A-Level (9MA0/03 – sat 14 June), appeared to have been accessed by someone who, late in the night before the exam sitting, posted on Twitter that they would sell a copy of the exam paper for £70. Pearson Edexcel launched an investigation after becoming aware that some scribbled out images of the exam paper were circulated online prior the exam sitting, and found one centre (out of thirty-eight possible suspect centres in one geographic location), who were visited at a very short notice, to have committed a serious and "possibly criminally motivated" security breach of the A-Level maths paper.
Students expressed frustration about the incident; BBC News reported that students believed the incident could have the potential to affect their results.[23][24] Pearson Edexcel stated that they have "well-established processes to ensure fair and accurate results" and that "grade boundaries will not be affected".[25] On 17 June Edexcel stated that the compromised questions could be removed from the overall assessment, as well as undertaking additional statistical analysis to identify irregular result patterns for particular centres or students.[26]
About 60,000 students were affected in this incident.[27] Two men aged 29 and 32 were arrested on 24 June on suspicion of theft. The men were released under investigation while inquiries continued.[28] Ahead of results day, it was revealed that 78 students who were suspected of being at an advantage from malpractice would have their results withheld. This is the largest number of candidates to be withheld results from a single malpractice incident.[29] No news report on the charge or conviction status after the arrest went to the press.
After a leak of the A-Level Grade Boundaries ahead of results day, it emerged that in order to pass the new specification Mathematics A-Level (9MA0), candidates needed to score 14% (43 marks out of 300) to pass.[30] OCR (another British exam board) also had similarly low grade boundaries. After these extremely low grade boundaries added flavour to many news headlines, Ofqual said that they were confident the grade boundaries this year were "sound", so shifted their focus onto the previous year's grade boundaries for the new Mathematics A-Level for the 2,000 students who sat it after studying it for one year. Ofqual said "We want to understand why the grade boundaries were so different between the two years.", and had called the significant shifts in boundaries "unusual".[31][32][33]
None of the exam boards decided to re-open the 2018 award, after being asked to look at them again by the regulator. This could potentially result in students who sat the new specification Mathematics A-Level (9MA0) in 2018 having their results changed.[31][32][33]
| Pearson School |
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| Pearson Higher Education | |
| Pearson Professional |
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| Other | |
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Edexcel (also known since 2013 as Pearson Edexcel) is a British multinational education and examination body formed in 1996 and wholly owned by Pearson plc since 2005. It is the only privately owned examination board in the United Kingdom. Its name is a portmanteau term combining the words education and excellence. Edexcel regulates school examinations under the British Curriculum and offers qualifications for schools on the international and regional scale. It is the UK's largest awarding organisation offering academic and vocational qualifications in schools, colleges and work places in the UK and abroad. It is also recognised internationally. In 2019, Edexcel was the focus of significant controversy following a leak of an A-level examination.
Pearson is a British multinational education and assessment company headquartered in London. It provides learning materials, assessments, qualifications, virtual learning, English-language learning, higher-education products and enterprise learning and skills services. The company is listed on the London Stock Exchange, is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index, and has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange through American depositary receipts. In 2025, Pearson reported revenue of £3.6 billion and had an average of about 17,000 employees. The company originated as S. Pearson & Son, a Yorkshire building and civil-engineering contractor founded in the nineteenth century. Under Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray, it became one of the world's largest engineering contractors and developed interests in Mexican oil, electricity, finance, coal, aviation and publishing. In the twentieth century Pearson shifted towards publishing and media, acquiring the Financial Times and a stake in The Economist in 1957, Longman in 1968 and Penguin Books in 1970. The company changed its name from S. Pearson & Son plc to Pearson plc in 1984. Under chief executive Marjorie Scardino, Pearson increasingly focused on education, forming Pearson Education in 1998 after acquiring the education businesses of Simon & Schuster. Between 2015 and 2020 Pearson sold the Financial Times, its stake in The Economist, and its remaining stake in Penguin Random House, leaving education, assessment and learning technology as its core businesses. Pearson is organised around five business units: Assessment & Qualifications, Virtual Learning, English Language Learning, Higher Education, and Enterprise Learning and Skills. It owns Edexcel, one of the main GCSE and A-level examination boards in England. Omar Abbosh has been chief executive since January 2024. Pearson has faced criticism and regulatory action over its role in education policy, exam security, qualification standards, data-breach disclosure and executive pay.
The International General Certificate of Secondary Education (IGCSE) is an English language-based secondary qualification similar to the GCSE and is recognised in the United Kingdom as being equivalent to the GCSE for the purposes of recognising prior attainment. It was developed by Cambridge International Education. The examination boards Edexcel, Learning Resource Network (LRN), and Oxford AQA also offer their own versions of International GCSEs. Students normally begin studying the syllabus at the beginning of Year 10 and take the test at the end of Year 11. However, in some international schools, students can begin studying the syllabus at the beginning of Year 9 and take the test at the end of Year 10. The qualifications are based on individual subjects off study, which means that one receives an "IGCSE" qualification for each subject one takes. Typical "core" subjects for IGCSE candidates include a First Language, Second Language, Mathematics and one or more subjects in the Sciences.
The Advanced Extension Awards are a type of school-leaving qualification in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, usually taken in the final year of schooling (age 17/18), and designed to allow students to "demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and skills to the full". Currently, it is only available for Mathematics and offered by the exam board Edexcel. They were introduced in 2002, in response to the UK Government's Excellence in Cities report, as a successor to the S-level examination, and aimed at the top 10% of students in A level tests. They are assessed entirely by external examinations. Due to introduction of the A* grade for A level courses starting September 2008 (first certification 2010), they have since been phased out, with the exception of the Advanced Extension Award in Mathematics which continues to be available to students.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Shirley Chisholm, elected in 1968.
