Are some exam boards 'easier' than others?

[longingforsomesleep]

DS (year 10) has announced that he will be doing Edexcel English not AQA as we were originally told. According to ds, this is because the school thinks they will get better results with Edexcel. Anybody got any experience of both exam boards and able to comment?

whilst I don't have experience of the boards in English - in my subject I chose the board that has a spec/exam series which suits my students better.

For example AQA have two essay heavy papers which whilst suits the most able, the least able struggle, whilst Edexcel have a range of assessment methods from multiple choice, small questions to heavy essay questions and therefore allow for my lower students to access at least some of the paper.
In order to equalise the 'easiness' of the multiple choise, the extended writing questions are harder than AQA and require a lot more analysis and evaluation to gain any marks

Are they moving to an iGCSE (Certificate course)? We're using the Edexcel one because there are no controlled assessments. Our students marks are pulled down by the controlled assessments and they use weeks of teaching time writing the *&%@ing things. So they may have moved to an exam only course and chosen the Edexcel one.

If they've swapped to Edexcel GCSE ... well, maybe it has a higher pass rate but it's hard to judge because AQA has such a large market share. I don't think Edexcel are seen as an 'easier' board and I can't imagine a university or employer looking too closely at which specification was used for a GCSE.