AoC Exams Conference 2025

With nearly 18 years of dedicated service at Nottingham College, Tina Hudson had the privilege of witnessing and contributing to numerous changes and mergers within the institution. As the Team Leader, she has led her team through those transitions, ensuring that they continue to provide high-quality education and support to their students. Tina’s extensive experience has equipped her with a deep understanding of the college's evolving landscape and the ability to adapt to new challenges and opportunities.

Nottingham College manages over 2,500 entries for GCSE English and over 2,500 for GCSE Maths. They accommodate a very high volume of students requiring access arrangements across multiple campuses and external venues.

Manurita Kalsi has worked at Kirklees College for nearly 24 years, with 20 years in the exams office. Over the years, they have adapted to changes in assessments, continuously improving systems and processes. Manurita enjoys working with data, systems, and processes, which fuels their passion for working in the exams office. They feel it is important to highlight the complex work of exams officers, which is bound by JCQ and exam board regulations, and data allows us to showcase our work.

Kirklees College delivers over 2000 students each for GCSE Maths and GCSE English, they work together as one team to deliver an excellent exams experience to our students and the exam team is at the core of this operation. The college also offers a wide range of vocational qualifications, end point assessments and T-Levels. Nearly 35% of their students have access arrangements and a lot of them come from challenging backgrounds, they continue to strive to achieve their mission of ‘Creating Opportunities, Changing Lives’.

Laura started in Exams more than a decade ago as an Invigilator, she has worked her way up through Exams Assistant, Exams Officer, Exams and Data Manager and now Exams Office Manager. She has worked in Grammar Schools, Secondary Schools and is currently managing the Exams Team in a large FE College. For the last two academic years, the College has nominated her to the College Collective as an Expert in Exams and she has been supporting other Exams Managers across the country.

Bridgit has worked in the Further Education sector for the last 15 years, starting as a lecturer and then progressing to leading Quality and Exams in a senior role. For the past 3 years she has been supporting colleges across the country as a consultant and interim exams officer. She is excited to have recently joined AQA as the Training and Development Manager in the Exams Officer Engagement team, who are working to support and engage with Exams Officers around the country and ensure their voice is heard within AQA

Charmaine Phelps originally trained as a maths teacher and worked in a mainstream secondary school before setting up a company where she managed around 20 facilitators teaching all aspects of the curriculum creatively - including maths - and delivered staff inset. She joined NCFE over 5 years ago starting out in a team where they supported schools with their choice of qualifications and then moved to the Provider Development team around 4 years ago. As a Provider Development Officer, she supports centres with their planning, delivery, and preparation for assessments focussing specifically on Functional Skills and Essential Digital Skills. NCFE deliver monthly CPD sessions that their providers can attend focussing on subject specific topics as well as more generic teaching strategies. She also conducts curriculum consultations with providers new to NCFE Functional Skills to give an overview of the qualifications and answer questions so providers can feel confident in their delivery and our assessment processes.

Jess is Associate Director for Stakeholder Engagement in Ofqual’s Vocational and Technical Qualifications (VTQ) Directorate. She has fifteen years’ experience working in stakeholder and communications roles in the education sector. Jess leads the team responsible for engaging with schools, colleges, students, employers and organisations across the sector, to gather intelligence on qualifications and clearly articulate Ofqual’s policy.  Jess is passionate about ensuring students have access to high quality education and training, and has undertaken a number of voluntary roles to support her professional development, at operational and board level. 

Becki Stokes has worked for BTC for 19 years, she has been working in exams for 18 of those. The college has grown and changed during that time. She enjoys the challenge of the ever-changing landscape within the exams function.

Lauren McLachlan has been a Senior Customer Support Manager at OCR for 3 years now. She’s responsible for the management of 7 field-based Customer Support Managers, covering different regions throughout England. She has 18 years' experience in the education sector, including working as a Exams Manager in a large sixth form college. She’s passionate about supporting the exams community in any way she can.

Gail White is a Customer Support Manager supporting schools and colleges in counties across the Midlands. She has been supporting Exams Officers with OCR since 2002

Rachel has worked for City & Guilds for over 10 years. With experience in the Customer Services team for 8 years Rachel moved to her current role within Quality Delivery in January 2023. Rachel leads the T Level team within Centre Quality, ensuring her team work closely with approved City & Guilds T level providers in their delivery. The team support with T level approvals, complete ongoing quality assurance monitoring and are a point of support for delivery of the qualifications.

With over 20 years’ experience as a senior commercial and business manager, John has a distinguished track record of crafting and executing successful sales and account management strategies within the social care and education sectors. Currently, John leads a dynamic team of business development managers at City & Guilds, a global leader in skills development and education. In this role, John oversees a multi-million-pound target and manages significant accounts across FE colleges, universities, prisons, and government agencies throughout the UK.