COBIS Chair Warns Ofqual Row Is Putting the British Education Brand at Risk

The annual gathering of British international school leaders in London this week took an unexpectedly sharp turn when COBIS chair Lord Knight warned that the UK exam regulator's handling of cancelled examinations in the Middle East risks damaging the reputation of British education worldwide. The comment resonated far beyond the Gulf: Asia hosts the majority of the world's British-curriculum schools, and the question of what happens when examinations cannot go ahead is not an abstract one.

According to Tes, Lord Knight said he was concerned about the effect on "British as a brand" because of what he called the "tin-eared response" of Ofqual and some examination boards to the cancellation of exams in countries including the UAE and Bahrain. He told delegates COBIS would be "working hard with our friends in other associations to put it right."

What the Ofqual dispute is actually about

The underlying dispute is technical but consequential. When in-person IGCSE and A-level examinations were cancelled across the Middle East for the May and June 2026 series due to the conflict in the region, exam boards including Pearson and Cambridge moved students to portfolio-based contingency grading. Ofqual, however, refused to validate teacher-assessed grades for its own regulated GCSEs and A levels, citing rules designed to ensure comparability with qualifications taken in England. The result: many students in affected schools will receive international equivalents of their qualifications rather than the Ofqual-regulated versions they had prepared for, potentially complicating conditional university offers.

Pearson's vice president for international schools urged students to check directly with their higher-education institutions that an International A level would be accepted in place of the regulated GCE qualification. UK universities were said to be broadly accommodating, but competitive courses were expected to look more closely at portfolios.

The relevance for Asia

For British schools in cities such as Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong, where geopolitical disruption is a conceivable if currently distant scenario, the episode has brought renewed attention to what contingency frameworks actually look like in practice. ISC Research CEO Leigh Webb noted at the same conference that the international schools sector now generates almost $70 billion in annual fee income from 15,075 schools, making it a commercially and reputationally significant enterprise. Any erosion of confidence in the underlying qualifications framework carries costs that extend well beyond the regions where examinations have already been cancelled.

COBIS has signalled it will continue pressing exam boards and UK government for clearer, faster contingency mechanisms. For parents and school leaders in Asia, the debate is a reminder that the value of a British-curriculum education rests, in part, on the stability of the awarding infrastructure behind it.