Preparing entries

Preliminary entry forms

Some awarding bodies send out preliminary entry forms in July or September, for return usually by mid-October or November: the return dates and practice vary from awarding body to awarding body. If your centre breaks up very early in the summer term, you may find they have not arrived before the end of term.

Awarding bodies require you to estimate the number of candidates your centre will have for each examination in the series. You need to make these estimates as accurate as possible. The data is used to assess the print run for the question papers and the number of examiners needed to mark them. These matters cannot always wait until final entries are collected, especially for the summer series. Some papers also have pre-release material (eg case studies for General Studies examinations, etc), which will be sent on the basis of provisional numbers. If you think you will have entries for a particular exam, but are not sure, it is worth showing this on the preliminary entry form. Similarly, if you have not indicated a preliminary entry and subsequently discover that you have one, then you should phone, fax or email the relevant awarding body entries section as soon as you can.