Official exam-board materials

1. What QLA does with official papers

QLA can catalogue past question papers and mark schemes published by AQA, Cambridge OCR and Pearson Edexcel. Each catalogue entry keeps a link back to the awarding body’s official source. Where a school or educator chooses to digitise a paper, QLA may temporarily process a lawfully accessible PDF to create a structured assessment record containing question numbering, marks, topics, Assessment Objectives and marking workflow information.

• QLA identifies the awarding body and links to the official question paper and mark scheme.
• The release package does not bundle the awarding bodies’ PDF archives.
• Temporary source downloads used for conversion are not intended to become a public mirror of the original files.
• Access controls distinguish teacher-assigned assessment from student self-start practice.
• Restricted or secure material must not be made public or exposed to unauthorised learners.

2. Why approved-centre use can be permitted

The three awarding bodies publish copyright policies that expressly allow approved centres to reproduce or make past papers and mark schemes available for specified internal educational purposes, subject to conditions. Those permissions are more directly relevant to centre use than relying on a general copyright exception.

3. Fair dealing and educational exceptions

UK copyright law contains educational exceptions, including fair dealing for illustration for instruction where the use is non-commercial, sufficiently acknowledged and fair. Government guidance makes clear that this is generally intended for limited, illustrative use and does not automatically permit copying an entire work or using a copy as a substitute for the original or a licensed resource.

For that reason, QLA does not state that digitising an entire past paper is automatically protected by fair dealing. Where a centre relies on an awarding-body permission, licence, contractual entitlement or another legal exception, the centre remains responsible for ensuring its particular use satisfies the relevant conditions.

4. Centre-only and access-controlled use

Where an awarding-body policy requires use to remain within an approved centre, QLA should be configured so only authorised staff and learners from that centre can access the digitised material. A public catalogue entry may identify a paper and link to an official public source, but centre-restricted question content or mark-scheme content should not be republished as an unrestricted public resource.

• Teacher-assigned tests: the mark scheme remains unavailable to the learner during and after the sitting unless the teacher deliberately releases appropriate feedback.
• Self-start practice: mark-scheme access is only provided after submission and should point to, or be based on, material the learner is lawfully entitled to access.
• Secure/recent materials: material restricted to a centre portal or otherwise confidential must stay subject to the awarding body’s access restrictions.
• No resale: QLA users must not sell the awarding bodies’ question papers or mark schemes as standalone materials.

5. Integrity of the original material

AQA, OCR and Pearson all place conditions around preserving the integrity of materials used under their centre permissions. QLA’s structured templates are therefore presented as a teaching and analysis layer, not as an assertion that QLA has authored or replaced the official paper. The original awarding-body document remains the authoritative source and is linked from the assessment wherever an official link is available.

Teachers should review any PDF extraction before using it. Automated conversion can misread mathematical notation, tables, diagrams, source material, page furniture, levels-based mark schemes or accessibility text. QLA should not present a converted question as an exact official transcription unless it has been checked against the source.

When an official paper is digitised, QLA may retain a per-question visual crop of the official PDF so diagrams, tables, graphs, equations and page layout are not lost during text extraction. These visual crops remain attributed to the source awarding body and are labelled with the board, exam year, paper/component and question number. They are supporting source material, not a claim that QLA owns the underlying examination content or any separately credited third-party material.

6. Third-party copyright inside exam papers

Some papers contain photographs, maps, articles, literary extracts, music, diagrams or other material owned by third parties. An awarding body’s permission to a centre may not pass on every third-party right. AQA, OCR and Pearson each warn that some third-party material is subject to separate restrictions. QLA users must respect any acknowledgement, redaction or restriction stated on the paper or in the awarding body’s copyright acknowledgement material.

7. No affiliation or endorsement

AQA, Cambridge OCR and Pearson Edexcel are independent awarding bodies. Their names, logos, qualifications, papers and mark schemes remain the property of their respective owners. QLA is an independent educational analysis tool and is not endorsed by, affiliated with or an official product of any of those awarding bodies unless an express written agreement says otherwise.

8. Source attribution

Where QLA references an official assessment, the assessment record should identify the awarding body, qualification, specification code, examination series and paper/component, and should retain links to the official question-paper and mark-scheme sources when those sources are publicly available. Attribution does not itself create permission to copy, but it is an important part of transparent and responsible educational use.

9. Takedown, correction and rights-holder contact

If an awarding body or other rights holder believes material is being used incorrectly, QLA will investigate a sufficiently detailed notice and can remove or disable a catalogue link, digitised template or public-facing reference while the issue is reviewed. Reports should identify the material, the rights claimed, the requested action and a reliable contact address.

Email: kyoung.co.uk@gmail.com

10. Responsibilities of schools, tutors and teachers

• Use only material you are lawfully entitled to access.
• Follow your awarding body’s centre agreement, copyright policy and security rules.
• Do not upload confidential or live assessment materials unless the awarding body expressly permits that use.
• Do not bypass a teacher-only portal, paywall, authentication control or other technical restriction.
• Do not assume that an old public link makes all reuse unrestricted.
• Check whether third-party content has additional restrictions before redistributing it.

This page explains QLA’s product approach and the published policies reviewed above. It is not legal advice and does not guarantee that every use of every past paper is lawful. Awarding-body policies can change; schools and service operators should check the current official terms and obtain professional advice where necessary.