—·Exam Boards

Every GCSE PE board delivers exactly 60% exam, 40% non-exam assessment. Ofqual decided that, not the boards.

AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR and WJEC Eduqas all publish the same split, tier for tier, because a regulatory condition fixes it. What differs is how each board delivers the 40%, and for one board, what the second task even is.

Empower Educators 18 September 2026 6 min read

Read from Ofqual’s GCSE Subject Level Conditions and Requirements for Physical Education and AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR and WJEC Eduqas’s own current specifications. Every figure below is named and sourced in full at the foot of the page.

Two pupils in school uniform walking and talking together outside school, one holding a phone

Ask which GCSE PE board is most generous with coursework and the honest answer is: none of them, because none of them decided. The 60% exam, 40% non-exam assessment split is not a specification choice AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR or WJEC Eduqas made independently — it is a condition Ofqual sets, and every board is required to meet it exactly.

Every board, every tier

60%Exam 40%Non-exam assessment

Inside the 40%

30%Performance 10%Analysis

Identical on AQA, Pearson Edexcel, OCR and WJEC Eduqas — set by Ofqual, not by any one of them.

Not a board's decision to begin with

The regulation is Condition GCSE(Physical Education)2.2, and it does not leave room to differ:

60 per cent of those marks are made available through Assessments by Examination, and 40 per cent of those marks are made available through assessments set by the awarding organisation that are not Assessments by Examination.
Ofqual, GCSE Subject Level Conditions and Requirements for Physical Education, Condition GCSE(Physical Education)2.2(a)

The same condition goes further than the headline split. It fixes what the 40% is made of, in Ofqual’s own terms:

30 per cent of the total marks available for the qualification are made available through tasks which assess a Learner’s performance in physical activity and sport (the ‘Performance Assessment’), and 10 per cent… through a task which assesses a Learner’s ability to analyse and evaluate performance to bring about personal improvement… (the ‘Performance Analysis Assessment’).
Ofqual, GCSE Subject Level Conditions and Requirements for Physical Education, Condition GCSE(Physical Education)2.2(b)

Nothing here is a board reading the room generously or meanly. Every GCSE PE awarding organisation in England sits inside the same 60/40 and the same 30/10, because the regulator, not the market, drew the lines.

Same number, four different shapes

What the regulation does not fix is how a board packages that 40% — how many separately moderated components it arrives in, and what exactly the department submits for each one.

AQA Physical Education (8582)

Performance + analysis 40% — 1 component

Pearson Edexcel GCSE (9–1) Physical Education (1PE0)

Practical Performance 30% (1PE0/03) + Personal Exercise Programme 10% (1PE0/04) — 2 components

OCR GCSE (9–1) Physical Education (J587)

Practical Performances 30% (J587/04) + Analysis and Evaluation 10% (J587/05) — 2 components

WJEC Eduqas GCSE Physical Education

Performance + analysis 40% — 1 component

Every bar is the same length: 40% of the qualification, on every board. AQA and WJEC Eduqas moderate performance and analysis as one component; Pearson Edexcel and OCR moderate them as two, each with its own component code and its own submission.

The task that changes shape

The bigger difference is not administrative. AQA, OCR and WJEC Eduqas all set the same kind of task for the Performance Analysis Assessment: a written analysis and evaluation of the student’s own or a peer’s performance in one activity, aimed at improving it. Pearson Edexcel does not. Its Performance Analysis Assessment is a Personal Exercise Programme — a student plans, carries out and monitors a training programme, then evaluates it.

Both satisfy the same 10%, Ofqual-defined slot: the ability to analyse and evaluate performance to bring about personal improvement. They are not the same piece of work. Analysing a badminton match and building a six-week strength programme call on overlapping skills and a genuinely different scheme of work, and a department that has only ever taught one assumes the other looks the same at its peril.

Check before the department commits to a board

Three questions, for a head of PE rather than the teacher setting one class’s coursework.

1 Does your board hand back one moderation deadline or two? AQA and Eduqas moderate performance and analysis together. Edexcel and OCR moderate them as two separately-coded components — two submission windows to plan around, not one.
2 If the department has ever taught more than one board, does the 10% task match? Three boards set a written analysis and evaluation of a played performance. Edexcel sets a Personal Exercise Programme — planning, running and evaluating a training programme, not analysing a match. A scheme of work built for one does not transfer to the other.
3 Is “40% coursework” being explained to parents as the board’s generosity? It is Ofqual’s ceiling, identical on all four boards by regulation. No board offers more, and switching boards will not change it.

What actually moved, and what didn't

The percentage was never in play. What is worth a department’s time is the two things underneath it that genuinely differ board to board — how many submissions the 40% costs in moderation, and whether the second task is an analysis of a match or the design of a training programme. Confirm both once, against the board actually being taught, and the regulation can be left to Ofqual.