AQA is also recognised by the regulators of the public exams systems for England, Wales and Northern Ireland to offer GCSE, AS and A Levels in the United Kingdom.

[4] AQA was originally formed on 7 November 1997 as an alliance of NEAB and AEB/SEG exam boards and City & Guilds vocational awarding body.

[5] AQA holds the candidate records and awards for the following historic exam boards: The Conservative Party under Prime Minister David Cameron initiated reforms for A Levels to change from a modular structure to a linear one.

[9] However, the Labour Party and in particular the member of parliament Tristram Hunt announced that it would seek to halt and reverse the reforms and maintain the modular A-Level system.

In addition, AQA announced that it would be performing "extra checks on the advance information and question papers for future exams".

[16] AQA responded by defending the paper, stating that the two topics were separate and therefore "neither carried enough marks to be included in the advance information list".

[19] In 2024, it was reported that the AQA's Chinese-language GCSE textbook removed all references to the Taiwan under pressure from the Embassy of China, London.