e-AQA to be replaced by Centre Services

Published: Monday 15 Feb 2021

We’re pleased to tell you that we’re launching a replacement for e-AQA on 8 March with a new system: Centre Services.

We’ll contact exams officers and centre administrators with more details and guidance on what to do next in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, though, there’s no change to how you make entries for the May and June series - you’ll still submit these through EDI, and run entry reports through e-AQA. Please also continue to use EDI and e-AQA for result files and e-documents for the January and March series.

Support for using Centre Services

We’ll be providing supporting materials, videos and the help of our Customer Services team. And to make sure we’re giving you the highest level of support as you start to use Centre Services, we’ll register schools gradually over a four-week period from March 8 to April 1.

We’re still waiting for the final decision on how grades will be determined, and when we know, we’ll be able to tell you how Centre Services will be used to provide support materials and to collect students’ grades. We’ll contact centre users and teachers ahead of the May / June assessments to explain what they’ll need to do, which may include accessing resources and submitting their teacher assessed grades. This will allow plenty of time to get to grips with the new system.

Schools will receive full e-learning training and support on our Learning Space platform, which will be entirely flexible to fit around other commitments. We’ll be contacting schools with more details on getting started with Learning Space and Centre Services in the coming weeks.

Why we’re launch Centres Services now

We’re launching our new Centre Services now because it’s more secure, reliable and easier for exams officers and teachers to use. It’s also more flexible and will be able to support rapidly changing needs, especially through the May / June series. Centre Services is part of a broader programme to replace our current exam processing system that is coming to the end of its life. This programme has been four years in the making and is all about giving you a better experience.

We realise that schools are already facing lots of challenges right now, especially while the final arrangements for the May / June assessments are still to be confirmed. We also recognise that as part of this teachers will be under lots of pressure as they determine grades for their students.

We’ll be working hard to make the transition from e-AQA to Centre Services as smooth as possible so that it will not add to the pressures facing teachers and exams officers in the coming months.

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