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EO page |  Development Hub | New Support portal | Spring/Summer support

Welcome to latest edition of the International Exams Officer update.

We'd like to highlight the new Spring/Summer essential information article which can help you navigate the next couple of months as you may be preparing to run exams in May and June.

You can also find support for other processes taking place during this time.

As exam season approaches, ensure you're fully prepared by considering these key points:

We will be sending you a 'Getting ready for exams' special edition EO update after the Easter holidays, please keep an eye out for this.

•  NEW  Enhanced AI Live Chat

•  NEW  Changes to international quality assurance

• Key Dates
• General Qualification paper dispatch update | Summer 2025

• Private candidate centre listing
• How to contact us
• Contacting us via email
• Keeping up to date with Pearson communications
• International Customer Services Team Postcards
• Cyber Security and Multi Factor Authentication

Our new dedicated space for Exams Officer training. We have created this as part of our commitment to you to offer enhanced support and training in 2024 and beyond. 

Features 

Access our library of interactive modules alongside live training, curated support articles, and the most useful documents from our website. We have brought everything you need to one place to save time when you need to upskill or refresh yourself on a topic. 

You can read How to access the Pearson Development Hub in our dedicated support article

Why not join us for our next live online event, taking place on Thursday 10 April, 9am - 10am BST.

In the April event we’ll be focusing on preparing you for the start of the summer exam series. We’d love to see you there!

You can find recordings of previous events and links to sign up in our support article: Exams Officer Update International Webinar Events 2024 / 2025

We will soon be launching our new Enhanced AI live chat service. For users who are logged in to customer support portal, this will replace the existing live chat functionality and provide you with the following benefits:

Unlike non AI driven chat services, one of the key benefits of this new service is that you can ask it any question*, in your own way and it will respond by accessing our vast library of support articles to find you an appropriate answer and reference the source material. 

*Answers are sourced from publicly accessible information, therefore it cannot answer any centre or learner specific queries.

What happens next

We will email you to let you know when this service is is up and running, but please remember you can only use this and receive the other benefits mentioned above, if you are logged into the customer support portal. 

We will email you to let you know when this service is is up and running, but please remember you can only use this and receive the other benefits mentioned above, if you are logged into the customer support portal.  

At the start of the academic year, we changed our international sampling strategy to improve efficiency and ensure reliable and valid results. We've now made some further improvements based on your valuable feedback. These changes will better support you and ensure consistent standards across all programmes.  

Overview of changes

1. New 0-25 Learner Cohort Size - This group will now receive a remote sample of 6, allowing for more tailored support and accurate assessment.
2. Removal of high and low-risk categories - We are moving to 'standard' (6 samples) and 'enhanced' (9 samples) sizes, simplifying the process and making it easier to manage.
3. Removal of “assessor by proxy” - all your assessors should be sampled over time in line with all other qualification suites, using the risk-based professional judgement of your International Standards Verifier on which assessors to sample first.  

Read our full update

Looking ahead to the summer series, here’s an update on when you will start receiving exam materials.

You can expect to start receiving standard and modified question papers from the following dates:

You will be able to track your standard question paper despatch for General Qualifications via Edexcel Online.

Please ensure that appropriate colleagues are aware that question papers will be arriving soon and what they need to do with them. Question papers need to be carefully checked to ensure that you have received what you were expecting and that all question paper packs are in good condition. You should report any issues relating to question papers as soon as possible.  

Whilst the vast majority of question paper deliveries marked for the attention of Exams Officers are made during normal centre hours, on rare occasions, a courier may attempt delivery when the main reception has closed, so papers cannot be stored securely. We encourage centres to inform staff to refuse these deliveries, and the papers will be redelivered.

Attendance registers

You can expect to start receiving attendance registers and labels from 23 April onwards.

Availability of Electronic Copies of Question Papers

Our goal is to ensure that your centre's exams run as smoothly and as stress-free for centre staff as possible. To help us achieve this goal, we would appreciate you making checks outlined below well ahead of your centre's first exam.   

If your centre requires access to electronic copies of question papers in the Summer 2025 exam series, for example if you make a late entry or need to print onto coloured paper, they will be available to download on the Secure Download Service (SDS). This also includes audio files and transcripts for listening exams. Our recommendation is that a minimum of two members of centre staff have SDS included in their Edexcel Online (EOL) profile.

If your exam staff do not already have SDS added to their EOL profile, they will need to contact us and be available to receive a secure call-back from our Customer Services Specialist on your centre's main telephone number. Once this call has been performed successfully, access to the SDS platform will be added to their account.   

Please see the SDS support guide for further details: Secure Download Service (SDS)

If you have centre exams staff without access to SDS, they should contact us as soon as possible, and well ahead of the summer exam series so that we can update their account.  

If you make any entries a week or less before the date of the exam, hard copies will not be sent to your centre. You will need to print the required amount of question papers from an electronic copy.

Electronic copies of question papers will be available via SDS if you are making additional entries. If you are making an entry for the first time this series for a new subject/paper, please contact us to request the question paper to be sent via (Secure File Transfer) SFT.  

It is important that all exam staff can access SDS as we will not be able to send electronic question papers via Secure File Transfer (SFT) on the day of the exam without a secure call back to your centre’s main telephone number first. This could result in logistical challenges for your centre at a critical time in the day - with staff required to move between an exam hall and your reception/ exam office. This may result in delays, including potentially impacting the start time of the exam in question. To avoid this please make checks to your exam staff EOL profiles (and specifically SDS) today. 

Did you know you can add your centre to our published list of international centres that offer Pearson and BTEC qualifications, to help in recruiting students?

If you would like to add your centre to this list, please complete the form below.

Once confirmed, your centre details will be added to this list on our qualifications website. You can remove or amend your details at any time by resubmitting the form.

There are multiple ways to contact the customer service teams at Pearson. The New Customer Support Portal allows you to choose a method that best suits you.

If you choose to contact us via email to pqs.internationaleo@pearson.com, you'll notice that our responses are sent from 'customersupport.reply@pearson.com'. This is a response only email address, and allows any responses you send, by clicking 'reply/reply all', to be linked to the existing support case.

However, if you were to compose a brand new email and send to that reply email address, there is no case to link it to, so we do not receive your email and you will not receive a response. This should result in a bounce back email stating the address is invalid.

The likelihood is that Pearson won’t be the only awarding organisation that you or your centre work with, and this means that you will receive lots of different communications. Some of these may be more relevant to your role than others, so it’s important that you and your colleagues are signed up to receive the regular updates that matter to you. It's also important that Edexcel Online accounts are accurate as these are used to determine who needs to receive ad hoc communications.

As Exams Officers, you will be responsible for the creation and maintenance of Edexcel Online account for those in other roles, such as teachers or other curriculum staff. Whilst doing this you could also sign them up to receive the relevant subject advisor updates.

Here is a full list of all the regular updates we send, including an archive of previous editions and the sign-up forms.

Our new digital international postcards are now interactive. These postcards have been designed to give you an insight into some of the areas our Customer Service team can support you with, whilst also providing you with access to the Knowledgebase articles that will help you self serve on the specific processes. These easy to use postcards will also provide you with the Contact Us information for your local Customer Service Hub support team.

Click the button below to see the postcard for your region.

Cyber Security

Whether you’re a new or experienced Edexcel Online user it's important that we are all aware of the possible threats to our collective data. We would encourage all exams staff, new and old to visit our cyber security webpage and watch our short training video.

Multi Factor Authentication

Multi Factor Authentication was successfully rolled out to nearly a quarter of a million Pearson Portal users last year. Although it has now become a standard way of accessing our systems, that we should all be familiar with, it can sometimes present challenges if a smart device is lost or replaced. You can read more information, see a quick start guide and access FAQs and troubleshooting for our authenticator app in our Pearson Portal Authenticator support article.

Don't forget we have a dedicated Pearson Exams Officer Support page on Facebook. This provides you with a quick and convenient way to stay up to date with our latest news and live updates from the team.

Important and informative announcements will be posted on the page daily and messages will be monitored 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday by Charlie, Emma and Seren; our dedicated Social Media Team. Message them with for help with your queries throughout your working day.