Associated Examining Board

The AEB (Associated Examining Board) was an examination board serving England, Wales and Northern Ireland from 1953 until 2000. It is now part of AQA.

The AEB was formed in 1953 by City & Guilds. It offered GCE (O Level and A Level) qualifications.

In 1985, when the government created a number of examining groups to devise and assess the new GCSE qualifications (which replaced O Levels and CSEs from 1988), the AEB was, with the University of Oxford Delegacy of Local Examinations, the South East Regional Examinations Board, South West (Regional) Examinations Board and Southern Regional Examination Board, one of the boards that worked together to provide GCSEs under the Southern Examining Group (SEG) name. The AEB came to control SEG entirely in 1994, forming AEB/SEG, though the two boards kept their respective identities.

In 1997, AEB/SEG entered into an alliance with two other exam boards, NEAB and City & Guilds, known as the Assessment and Qualifications Alliance (AQA). By 1999, examination papers were dual-branded with both the AQA and AEB/SEG names on the papers and the 1999 examination certificates featured just the AQA name. In 2000, the boards formally merged. As AEB/SEG and NEAB overlapped in the qualifications they offered, AQA retained two specifications for many subjects, with schools able to choose between the two.