AQA Education

What does AQA own?
AQA is a single charitable organization that owns its qualification specifications, trademarks, and the teacher resource services Teachit and Doublestruck. It does not own other companies or brands in the commercial sense.

Is AQA publicly traded?
No. AQA is a registered charity and company limited by guarantee. It cannot issue shares or list on an exchange, and it has no shareholders.

Who founded AQA?
AQA was created in 2000 by merging the Northern Examinations and Assessment Board with AEB/SEG. Its earliest predecessor, the Joint Matriculation Board, was founded in 1903 by the universities of Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool.

Where is AQA headquartered?
AQA is headquartered on Devas Street in Manchester, England, United Kingdom. It also operates large offices in Milton Keynes, Guildford, and Harrogate, with a London presence.

How many brands does AQA own?
AQA operates mainly under the AQA name, supported by the Teachit and Doublestruck services it acquired in 2011 and programs such as AQA Unlocking Potential.

Who owns AQA?
Nobody owns AQA in the commercial sense. It is an independent registered charity governed by a board of trustees, with no shareholders, parent company, or private owners. Surpluses are reinvested into its charitable purpose.

Is AQA regulated?
Yes. AQA's qualifications are regulated by Ofqual in England, and by Qualifications Wales and CCEA for the versions offered in Wales and Northern Ireland. Its charitable activities are overseen by the Charity Commission.

The oldest strand of AQA's history is the Joint Matriculation Board, created in 1903 by the universities of Manchester, Leeds, and Liverpool to run school entrance examinations. The JMB developed into the main northern exam board and became the Northern Examining Association before merging into the Northern Examinations and Assessment Board in 1992.

In the south, the Associated Examining Board was founded in 1953 to deliver the new GCE qualifications to a wider range of schools. It later combined with the Southern Examining Group as AEB/SEG.

The consolidation of England's exam boards accelerated in the 1990s as government pushed for fewer, larger awarding bodies. On 7 November 1997 the NEAB and AEB/SEG formed an alliance, and on 1 April 2000 they merged formally as the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance. City and Guilds withdrew from the full merger but transferred its GNVQ provision to the new organization. The name shortened to AQA, and the charity's legal name eventually became AQA Education.

Successive waves of national reform reshaped its work. Curriculum 2000 introduced the AS and A2 structure. The 2010s brought the decoupling of AS Levels, the return to linear A Levels, and the reformed 9 to 1 GCSEs, each requiring hundreds of rewritten specifications and large-scale teacher training.

AQA expanded into digital services in 2011 by acquiring Teachit, a teacher resource-sharing site, and Doublestruck, a provider of question banks and on-screen assessment tools. These subsidiaries of the charitable mission support classroom teaching alongside the exam business.

The pandemic years were the most disruptive in the board's history. Exams were cancelled in 2020 and 2021 and replaced by teacher assessed grades under government direction. Full exams resumed in 2022, and grading standards were gradually realigned to pre-pandemic levels. AQA marked its 25th anniversary in 2025 while expanding pilots of on-screen assessment.

AQA's recognition comes through its scale and sector standing rather than commercial awards. It is routinely cited in Ofqual publications and parliamentary education committee work as the largest English awarding body.

Its staff and trustees have received honors within the UK education and charity sectors, and its teacher support services hold strong satisfaction ratings in school surveys.

AQA operates under continuous public and regulatory scrutiny inherent to high-stakes national assessment.

The 2020 and 2021 grading arrangements, when exams were cancelled and teacher assessed grades substituted, produced national controversy over grade inflation and fairness. AQA implemented the government-directed system with the other boards and returned to normal examining in 2022.

It faces periodic complaints over individual questions, marking consistency, and boundary setting, handled through Ofqual's oversight. Wider criticism of the exam board system, in which a few large bodies award nearly all qualifications, regularly names AQA as the dominant player. No formal sanctions are on record against the charity.