Awarding body Edexcel today opened a new examination and coursework processing centre  -  a 16,000 square foot building which will increase the size of its processing facility by 50% - at a cost of over £1 million.  The centre is expected to handle some four million scripts this summer alone.

The new facility is part of an overall £12 million that Edexcel is investing in examinations processing, customer service and curriculum development.

Opening the centre Edexcel’s Chairman, Garry Hawkes, said: "This additional new facility represents a major investment and is part of an ongoing programme of expanding our processing capability to ensure that we can deliver an efficient examination system."

The centre has been opened in response to a substantial increase in the volume of examinations and coursework generated by the new post-16 curriculum introduced in September 2000, Curriculum 2000. 

This summer the centre will deal with more than 350 different GCE examination papers and nearly 1000 different GCSE papers.  In total it will handle approximately four million scripts and process ten million marks.

The centre employs 86 full-time members of staff and at the busiest period - from mid July - a further 600 temporary employees.  Edexcel processes examinations from more than 4500 schools and colleges, employing over 16,000 professional contracted examiners to mark students’ scripts.