March 2025

Dear Colleague,

Welcome to the March 2025 edition of the March series Cambridge Exams Officer eNews.

In this issue you will see reminders about what to do on exam day, and our deadline for withdrawals.

Please get in touch if you need any help or advice.

Best wishes
Customer Services Team

Contact details

Make sure we have the correct contact details for your centre on Direct. See our website (under Phase 1 – Preparation) for details of how to update your contact details and change of address or name, or to request a change to the syllabuses your centre is eligible to enter. If no one at your centre has access to Direct, please contact us.

You can also ask us to send the eNews to other staff in your centre. Previous editions of eNews are available here. 

Cambridge Handbook 2025 updates

Updates made to the Cambridge Handbook 2025 are summarised on our website. We share any updates or changes we make to the handbook throughout the year in our ‘updates to the Cambridge Handbook’ page on our website.

We no longer send printed copies of the handbook. You must print a copy of the Key Times and Full Centre Supervision section, and sections 4 and 5, and have them in all your exam rooms. We have created separate print-ready versions of these sections which are also available on our website.

In this issue

• Key Tasks
• Training for exams officers
• March 2025 series
• Other items to be aware of

Key dates and calendars for March 2025 series

See our website to find the key dates and monthly calendar for the March 2025 series.

You can also download the icalendar for the March 2025 series to save all the key dates to your calendar 

New online course launched in 2025

In January 2025, we launched a new online course for exams officers who have less than one year’s experience in their role. The course is a 12-week, modular course (approximately 1–2 hours of study a week) and provides in-depth training for your role as a Cambridge exams officer.

This new course replaced the ‘Getting to know the Cambridge Exams Cycle’ course and the ‘Welcome to being a Cambridge exams officer’ webinar.

Due to high demand from our exams officers, our pilot courses are now full; however, there will be further opportunities to enrol on the new course. We will let you know when the course is available to book again.

To make sure we continue to support all exams officers as we move to the new course, all our exams officer webinars are available as usual. These are free and available to all exams officers. You can sign up to them on the Professional Development Calendar or see details below. 

Exams officer webinars

All our webinars are on our Professional development calendar. You can book on to our next webinars below.

Focus on: Access arrangements webinar

Wednesday 2 April 2025

This free-to-access, one-hour webinar is open to all exams officers and focuses on access arrangements. Our access arrangement experts will talk you through evidence of need for candidates with access arrangements, and the steps you follow to easily apply for access arrangements. You can also ask us questions about Apply for Access Arrangements. Please share details of this webinar with your Special Educational Needs Coordinator in your school if you have one.

How to prepare for results release for the March 2025 exam series 

Wednesday 30 April 2025

This free-to-access, one-hour webinar is for exams officers who are running exams in the March 2025 series, which is available for Indian and Romanian centres only. Join for detailed information about preparing for results release, giving your candidates their results and certificates, and applying for enquiries about results. You can also ask our Results and Despatches team questions.

Phase 2: Entries

Withdrawals

You can still request a withdrawal for medical reasons, following bereavement, or other exceptional circumstances.

Once we release results, we will not accept any further requests for withdrawals. Contact us if you need to request a withdrawal.

Phase 3: Coursework and moderation

Submit your coursework accurately and on time

For any syllabus which has a coursework component or a speaking test, it is important that you or your teaching colleagues know:

• when and how to submit your candidates’ work
• which forms need to be submitted
• how to submit marks for internally assessed components.

The samples database has detailed guidance about how to submit your candidate’s work (either via Submit for Assessment or in hardcopy) and the relevant deadline(s). You can also download the latest version of the forms for each component.

You must submit coursework for marking or moderation by the relevant deadline.

Your candidates’ results may be delayed if we do not receive your marks and samples by the deadline.

Phase 4: Before the exams

Receiving question paper despatches

It is extremely important that you telephone us if you do not receive question paper packets within two days of the timetabled exam. Do not email us as this could delay our response.

Phase 5: Exam day

Question paper packets

Before each exam, you must collect the question paper packets from your secure storage area. You and another member of staff must both check that the syllabus, component and date on the front of the packet match the syllabus, component and date on the timetable and attendance register. You must do this before handing out the papers to candidates. If you open a question paper packet in error, complete and return Exam day – Form 11 immediately. Please refer to section 4.2 of the Cambridge Handbook for more information on question paper despatches.

Malpractice

Malpractice can be:

• intentional and aim to give an unfair advantage in an exam or assessment
• caused by people being careless, forgetful or unaware of our regulations
• beyond anyone’s control and be a result of circumstance.

The Head of Centre must report any suspected malpractice to us on the same day or no later than 12:00 local time on the following working day using the relevant malpractice forms.

Unauthorised materials

Unauthorised materials may allow or assist candidates to compromise the integrity of the assessment by:

• sharing, accessing and concealing information that may be relevant to the assessment

Candidates must not bring unauthorised materials into the exam room. Section 5.1.7 of the Cambridge Handbook provides examples. This list does not include every possible unauthorised material. You and your invigilators must use your own judgement by asking yourself whether the item potentially allows a candidate to hide or access information in the exam room.

Some unauthorised materials can be difficult to identify, such as calculators with messaging, internet or storage facilities. You and your invigilators must be alert to candidates attempting to bring unauthorised materials into the exam room. Invigilators should check a sample of candidates’ calculators before the start of the exam to make sure they meet our regulations, including clearing any stored information or programs.

All instances of candidates bringing unauthorised materials into the exam room must be reported to Cambridge using Exam Day – Form 9d. See section 5.6 of the Cambridge Handbook.  

Late arrivals

If a candidate arrives late but before the Key Time, you may allow them to enter the exam room and sit the exam. You do not need to tell us. If a candidate arrives after the Key Time but before the end of the exam, you can allow them to enter the room and sit the exam. You must warn the candidate that we may not accept their script. You need to tell us if this happens by completing and sending us Exam Day – Form 3. See section 5.1.9 of the Cambridge Handbook.

Special consideration

Special consideration is a post-exam adjustment that we make to a candidate's mark. We do this to make allowances for some adverse circumstances - for example: illness, bereavement, temporary injury or disruption to an exam.

You can now apply for special consideration on Direct You must apply no later than seven days after the last exam of the syllabus in the exam series affected.

You can submit applications for different types of special consideration:

• Present but disadvantaged candidates
• Absent candidates
• Coursework related special consideration.

Candidates entered into the March 2025 series must:

• have covered the whole course and
• have completed a minimum of 15 per cent of the total assessment by component weighting in the relevant exam series. Carry-forward marks do not count.

Usually, the minimum requirements for calculating an assessed mark are that the candidate must:

• have covered the whole course and
• have completed 50 per cent of the total assessment by component weighting in the relevant exam series. Carry-forward marks do not count.

We cannot produce an A Level result where the candidate has not taken any A2 components. We cannot produce a result where the only component the candidate has taken is a separately endorsed component.

24-hour security rule

All unused question papers and answer booklets must be stored securely until at least 24 hours after the Key Time for the exam. After this time, you can dispose of the unused question papers or you can share them with candidates/centre staff. You must not share them online or with anyone from outside your centre.

In addition to our requirements for the storage of confidential material at your centre, please remind candidates that they must not remove any question papers or question paper content from the exam room. Candidates must not discuss the content of a question paper or other confidential material, such as speaking test topics, with any other candidate until either the Key Time or end of the assessment window has passed. If they do, this may be considered malpractice.    

Returning scripts

You must return your candidates’ scripts promptly because there is only a short amount of time between the exams and the release of results.

You must send your scripts using a courier with a tracking facility as soon as each exam is over, on the same day. We recommend you use the same courier who delivered your exam materials. Do not send scripts for all components of a syllabus in the same outer packaging.

Complete our script return form each time you send us a consignment of scripts

Phase 6: Results and certificates

Results release

Results will be available on Direct on 20 May 2025.

From now until the release of results, we may contact you with questions about your scripts or candidate attendance at any of your exams. Make sure you, or another member of staff, are available to answer these urgent queries. If we cannot resolve the problem we may have to issue ‘NO RESULT’ or ‘PENDING’ outcomes. If you need to update your contact details, please email info@cambridgeinternational.org immediately.

Priority results

We know many students have deadlines for submitting results to educational institutions around the world, which may be close to our results release date. Your candidates can ask us to send a priority statement of results directly to their chosen educational institutions or employers on the day results are released. These results will arrive on the same day or shortly after results release.

For applications to UK universities, we send Cambridge International AS & A Level, Cambridge International Project Qualification (CIPQ) and Cambridge AICE Diploma (ADIP) results to the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) in time to meet university deadlines. There is no need to request priority results information for these qualifications if a candidate is applying to a UK university.

If candidates need to send other qualifications, such as Cambridge IGCSEs, they will still need to apply for priority results.

To apply for a statement of results, the candidate or the centre where the candidate took the exam must complete and return Results and Certificates – Form 9 (March series) by 30 April 2025.

Candidate results website

Candidates can view their results directly on results release day if you give them access to our Candidate Results website.

We recommend you set up your candidates with access this month, so you have time to provide candidates with their login details before results release.

Moderation reports

If you made entries for internally assessed components, your moderation report will be available from Direct within 14 days of results release 

Be alert for scams

You should always be alert to fraudulent activity; for example, scammers could send you an invoice that appears to come from Cambridge.

Our bank details have not changed, and we will never ask you to change our bank details to pay an invoice from us.

If you receive any emails or invoices that look suspicious you should telephone us on +44 1223 553554 and our Customer Services Team will transfer you to a colleague who will be able to check that it came from us.

It is your responsibility to make sure that you are making any payments to the correct Cambridge bank account. If you have questions about making payments securely, contact your bank or payment provider for support.

What's new - updated and new syllabuses 

For the latest information about ‘What’s new’ from Cambridge, including details of new, revised and withdrawn programmes and qualifications, visit www.cambridgeinternational.org/news

See our Syllabus changes guide for the full list of revisions and don’t forget to subscribe to our Syllabus update mailing list to stay up to date about future changes to the syllabuses you teach.

Fees list

Our fees list for 2025 is available from the ‘My Messages’ section of Direct. It includes our exam, school registration and administration fees.

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