Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether pupils will be required to self-fund (a) A level and (b) GCSE exams that they plan to resit in Autumn 2021.

The autumn exam series will give students who may wish to improve their summer GCSE, A level or maths and science AS level teacher assessed grade the opportunity to do so.

The Department has set out in guidance that centres are expected to fund their autumn fees from exam fee rebates. We confirmed that we will support centres where exam fees exceed their summer rebate. Students at state-funded centres and private candidates should therefore not be required to cover the cost of exam entry fees for the autumn series.

The Department is also providing an extensive autumn exam support service to help centres with essential additional costs associated with running exams in the autumn, including assistance with costs for additional venue space and invigilation. In addition, this year the Department is providing funding for invigilator training, and funding venue and invigilation costs for condition of funding students.

The autumn series exams are open to any student who receives a teacher-assessed grade this summer, or who an exam board reasonably believes would have entered the summer 2021 exams had they taken place. This includes private candidates. In addition, any student who was aged at least 16 on 31 August 2021 can take the GCSE English language and maths exams in the November series, as is normally the case if required as a condition of funding.

It is at the discretion of independent schools whether to charge fees for entries to autumn exams.

Further information can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/responsibility-for-autumn-gcse-as-and-a-level-exam-series/centre-responsibility-for-autumn-gcse-as-and-a-level-exam-series-guidance.