In 2005, Edexcel became the only large examination board to be held in private hands, when Pearson plc took complete control.

[5] It is considered by the UK NARIC (the National Recognition Information Centre for the United Kingdom) to be of a comparable standard as the GCE Advanced Level.

[11] In 2013, the loss of an A-Level C3 Mathematics exam being delivered to an international school in Amsterdam led to a replacement paper being published for the Summer examination series.

[12] In June 2015, students across the United Kingdom who had taken an Edexcel GCSE Maths paper expressed anger and confusion over questions that "did not make sense" and were "ridiculous", mocking the exam on Twitter.

[13][14][15] On a Sky News segment, presenter Adam Boulton answered one of the paper's 'hardest' questions with a former maths teacher.

[16][17] As a result, GCSE students across the UK signed a petition made by a candidate requesting that the exam board lowers the grade boundaries as the examination was too hard.

An additional petition was started by a 17-year-old student requesting to "Ensure the representation of women on the A-Level Music syllabus."

Before results day, Pearson Edexcel released a video addressing students about the difficulty concerns and mentioned that independent experts did confirm that the exam was "fair and valid".

Pearson Edexcel launched an investigation after becoming aware that some scribbled out images of the exam paper were circulated online prior the exam sitting, and found one centre (out of thirty-eight possible suspect centres in one geographic location), who were visited at a very short notice, to have committed a serious and "possibly criminally motivated" security breach of the A-Level maths paper.

[22][23] Pearson Edexcel stated that they have "well-established processes to ensure fair and accurate results" and that "grade boundaries will not be affected".

[24] On 17 June Edexcel stated that the compromised questions could be removed from the overall assessment, as well as undertaking additional statistical analysis to identify irregular result patterns for particular centres or students.