Pearson has taken responsibility for the incidents, which took place between 2019 and 2023, and according to Ofqual affected tens of thousands of students.
The cases included cheating by takers of Pearson’s online PTE Academic Online English language test, the digital version of which was brought in to meet urgent demand during the pandemic and is no longer in use.
Pearson said the test was never intended for migration or visa purposes and that it stopped making the test available in 2023 after it found out about the malpractice, undertook a full investigation and revoked the affected test scores to “protect admissions integrity”.
The testing provider said in a statement that all current PTE results are “completely unaffected and continue to meet the highest standards”.
Nevertheless, Ofqual fined Pearson £750,000 for the incident. It said the online test allowed about 5% of test-takers to take the assessment at home, rather than a secure test centre, and that in 2023 some cases had involved other people sitting the test on the student’s behalf, overriding the remote invigilation safeguards Pearson had put in place.
Although it noted that Pearson had identified the issue and revoked nearly 10,000 affected test results, Ofqual noted that the testing company had admitted it should have identified the cheating sooner than it did, as well as reporting it to the watchdog more quickly.
Ofqual fined Pearson another £750,000 over its failure to effectively manage the risk of inconsistent grading standards between its GCSE English language qualification and an updated version of the same qualification, despite the watchdog highlighting this risk in 2022 and 2023. This meant that when standards for the updated test were realigned with the previous version in summer 2024, students were given the correct, but lower-than-expected results – leading to complains to Ofqual.
Pearson said it had set the standards for the updated test in 2022 – the first summer exam series since assessments were cancelled during the pandemic – which it pointed out had made setting standards for a new test “challenging”.
Finally, Pearson was fined £505,000 over problems with its A level qualification in Chinese (spoken Mandarin/spoken Cantonese) after the regulator’s reviews of exams from 2019,2022 and 2023 found “multiple issues” with how questions were set and responses marked.
Our actions at the time did not meet regulatory requirements or the high standards that learners and educators rightly expect from us
Pearson
It found that Pearson has missed chances to resolve these issues after they were raised by teachers and others – leading to around 12,000 students being affected. Non-native Chinese speakers were especially affected as the assessment were “inappropriately demanding” for them.
“We take responsibility for the issues that affected GCE A Level Chinese, GCSE English Language 2.0, and our legacy PTE Academic Online Test at different times between 2019 and 2023,” Pearson said in a statement.
“Our actions at the time did not meet regulatory requirements or the high standards that learners and educators rightly expect from us.”
“For each of these cases, we conducted a comprehensive review of our processes and have implemented robust improvements,” it added, apologising to the the students affected and stressing that it had learned from these incidents.
Ofqual’s executive director for delivery, Amanda Swann, said the fines reflected the “serious nature of Pearson’s failures”.
“Students must be able to trust that their results, and those of their peers taking the same qualifications, accurately reflect their performance, in line with appropriate standards. Students’ work must also be their own,” she added. “This action is necessary to deter Pearson and other awarding organisations from similar failings in future.”
