Exam board Pearson fined £2m for ‘serious’ breaches in standards

Ofqual issues fines over English proficiency test that some candidates sat at home, A-level Chinese and GCSE English

One of the world’s biggest providers of educational services has been fined more than £2m for a range of serious breaches related to examination standards that could have affected tens of thousands of students.

Pearson, a FTSE 100-listed company, was hit by financial penalties of £750,000 for each of two cases and £505,000 for a third by Ofqual, the exams regulator. The cases concerned GCSE English language exams, A-level spoken Chinese and an online English proficiency test.