The two charitable exam boards whose public benefit provision was called into question by Channel 4 News this week have insisted they do plenty of charitable work to justify their charity status.
In a news item aired on Monday night, Channel 4 “lifted the lid on the extent to which exam boards profit from increased school fees, despite claiming tax-free charitable status”.
The latest figures for exam boards AQA and OCR, both of which are charities, show they had incomes of £159m and £115m respectively, and paid their chief executives salaries of £182,000 and £172,000 respectively.
John Bangs, former head of education at the National Union of Teachers, told the programme that the government should examine whether these organisations should be entitled to charitable status. The other major exam board, Edexcel, used to be a charity but converted to a company in 2005.
Bangs told Channel 4 News that because some schools are richer than others, they end up getting a better service from the exam boards, despite the fact that their charitable status means they have a duty to provide for the poor.
But AQA chief executive Andrew Hall told the programme that there is no difference between the number of state and private schools asking for remarkings, and denied that poorer schools are prevented from asking for remarks because of the cost.
Channel 4's investigation followed earlier revelations by the programme that potentially thousands of children received the wrong results in their A-level and GCSE exams last year because of examiners adding up marks incorrectly.
AQA lists public benefit provision
AQA told civilsociety.co.uk that it outlines its public benefit provision in its annual accounts, and listed various activities that contribute to this. These included subsidising loss-making subjects, investing in a programme with academies to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses at an early stage, and funding a national mentoring programme with the Dame Kelly Holmes Legacy Trust.
A spokeswoman for AQA added: “We are not aware of any concerns at all from the Charity Commission about our charitable status.”
In response to a question about whether Andrew Hall’s salary was justified, she said the trustees set the salary “based on the need for someone who can lead the organisation through a time of great change in education policy, with A-level and GCSE reforms and ensure these changes are as smooth as possible for teachers and their students”. AQA employs 1,436 people.
The Charity Commission is the principal regulator for AQA only – OCR is an exempt charity and a department of the University of Cambridge, and as such it is regulated by the Higher Funding Council for England.
The Commission said no concerns have been raised with it about AQA, and added: “Our draft public benefit guidance, which we’re consulting on at the moment, explains that charities can charge for the services and facilities they provide.”
OCR: recognising student achievement is charitable
An OCR spokeswoman told civilsociety.co.uk that the provision of exam services for the purpose of recognising student achievement is a charitable activity “as it is primary purpose trading”. Any surpluses the charity makes are “invested and placed in reserves to be retained against sudden changes in the operating environment or returned to the University of Cambridge for educational purposes”.
In addition, in 2020/11 OCR gave £4m to the University; in recent years it has given £19m to the Cambridge Commonwealth and Overseas Trusts to fund scholarship programmes; and it subsidises loss-making syllabuses. It also supplies free ebooks to any A-level learner, whether or not they are taking OCR’s exams, and has set up a fund to provide bursaries to West Midlands students to “help them make the most of their opportunity of studying at the University of Cambridge”.
With regard to the CEO’s pay, she said: “Mark Dawe runs an organisation that turns over £116m and has 600+ staff, supplying over six million crucially important educational results to more than 6,000 centres. His salary is in line with similar size organisations.”
