Exams officer in a secondary school

An exams officer runs the administration of public exams in a secondary school or college: entering candidates with the awarding bodies, building the timetable, organising rooms and invigilators, keeping question papers secure and handling results and post-results services. The post is support staff, usually paid on the NJC pay spine, and in many schools it is term-time only with extra weeks around results. It is a job for someone who likes detail and stays calm when the rules are strict and the deadlines are fixed.

The rules that run the job

Almost everything an exams officer does is governed by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ). Its documents set out how question papers must be stored, how exam rooms are laid out and supervised, what candidates can and cannot bring in, how access arrangements are applied and what counts as malpractice. The awarding bodies (AQA, Pearson, OCR, WJEC and others) expect schools to follow them to the letter, and a JCQ inspector can turn up unannounced during the exam season to check the secure storage and the conduct of exams.

That means the exams officer is the person in school who says no. No, a teacher cannot open the paper packets early. No, a candidate cannot sit in a different room without the right paperwork. Staff will sometimes push back, and the role needs the backing of a senior leader, usually a deputy head, who is accountable to the awarding bodies as head of centre.

A year in the exams office

The work follows a fixed cycle, and the quiet months are shorter than people expect.

Period	Main work
September	Results enquiries and reviews of marking from the summer, certificates, planning the year
Autumn term	November resits, mock exams, collecting coursework deadlines, early entries
January to March	Main summer entries, access arrangements, non-examined assessment marks, invigilator recruitment and training
May and June	The main exam season: daily sittings, clashes, special consideration, secure despatch of scripts
August	A level and GCSE results days, enquiries about results

May and June are intense. There can be several sittings a day across many rooms, with candidates who have extra time, readers, scribes or a word processor. The exams officer is usually in early to open the secure store and leaves after the last scripts are packed.

Results days in August are why many term-time contracts include a few extra paid weeks. Check how your contract handles them before you sign.

Managing invigilators

Most schools hire a team of exam invigilators on casual or zero-hours contracts. The exams officer recruits them, checks they have the right DBS clearance, trains them on the JCQ instructions, writes the rota and deals with them on the day. A senior invigilator may help in bigger schools.

Training is a requirement, and so is keeping a record of it. Schools also have to brief invigilators every year on changes to the rules, which tend to arrive in late summer.

Skills and background

Schools look for people who can work accurately against fixed deadlines and keep confidential information to themselves. Experience of school administration, data work or any regulated admin job helps. You will spend a lot of time in the school’s management information system (SIMS, Arbor, Bromcom or similar) and on the awarding bodies’ secure websites, so being comfortable with spreadsheets and online systems matters more than any particular qualification.

In smaller schools the post is often combined with data work. An “exams and data officer” may also run assessment tracking and the school census, which overlaps with the school data manager role.

As with any school job, expect an enhanced DBS check with the children’s barred list, two references and the online checks that schools carry out under safer recruitment.

Pay and contracts

Exams officer posts in maintained schools and most academies follow the NJC pay spine for support staff. For 2026/27 the spine runs from £25,614 at point 3 to £56,293 at point 43 (full-time, 37 hours, all year). Where a particular post sits depends on the school’s or council’s job evaluation, so the grade varies a good deal between employers. The NJC pay spine guide has every point.

If the post is term-time only, the advertised full-time salary is reduced. Under the NJC’s advisory model, a 39-week contract with a 36-day leave comparator works out at 86.778 per cent of full-time pay before any reduction for shorter hours. How term-time-only pay is calculated walks through the arithmetic, and the take-home pay calculator shows what lands in your account.

Support staff in schools usually join the Local Government Pension Scheme. Contribution rates depend on your actual pay; in 2026/27 the main section charges 5.8 per cent on pay from £18,401 to £29,000 and 6.5 per cent from £29,001 to £47,300.

Finding a post

Schools advertise exams officer jobs on Teaching Vacancies, on council job sites and on trust websites. Adverts appear all year, but many schools recruit in spring so the new person can shadow before the summer series. If you are new to exams work, invigilating for a season is a practical way to see how the office runs and to get known by a school’s exams team.