School spending on exams doubles to £328m in a decade

School spending on exams rose to £328m last year - up from £154m less than a decade ago, according to figures from the exam watchdog Ofqual.

The annual report on the exam market in England, Wales and Northern Ireland also shows the number of qualifications has doubled to 18,000 in five years.

This includes 300 different A-levels, 250 AS-levels and 800 GCSE options.

Altogether in 2010-11 there were 16 million separate qualifications awarded, including vocational training.

Ofqual's report shows the scale and cost of the qualifications market in 2010-11 - with the amount spent on exam fees rising by 8.5% on the previous year.

The report shows that the amount spent by schools on exams has increased above inflation every single year since 2002.

This increase has outstripped the rise in school running costs - and means that exam fees have taken a growing proportion of budgets.

We are concerned about the scale of school spending on exams - this is money that could otherwise be spent on teaching”

The reasons for the sustained increase are suggested as higher fees, more pupils taking exams, more re-sit fees and a shift to pupils taking more expensive exams.

The average A-level fee, the report says, is now about £81 for maths and £93 for French.

Within the total of 16 million qualifications awarded there were 5.5 million GCSEs - drifting downwards from a high point of 6.2m in 2007.

The report suggests that this might be because schools are offering more non-GCSE qualifications.

The number of A-levels awarded has remained a small proportion of the overall total - 880,000, the same as the previous year.

Among the biggest areas of business for the qualifications industry is the wide range of vocational, training and basic skills awards, with eight million qualifications awarded.

There has been a continuing growth in the number of bodies awarding qualifications - rising to 179 from about 100 a decade ago.

A Department for Education spokesman said: "Our reforms to league tables mean that while GCSEs will continue to count, low-quality qualifications that don't help young people into further study or jobs will be stripped out."

"We are concerned about the scale of school spending on exams - this is money that could otherwise be spent on teaching.

"Expenditure on exams, including exam fees, is one of the most significant calls on school and college budgets, and has been growing in real terms, as has the percentage of budgets that this represents."