Most of the exam publications in our archives from the 19th and 20th centuries are held as hard-copy documents. However, we have produced scanned digital samples of question papers, syllabuses and reports from 1950 to the present, of the major subjects for O Level, GCSE and A Level. These are available via the subject-specific tabs.
Copies of specific past papers may be available for private research - subject to copyright legislation, availability and on payment of a search and copy fee (for details see the Access to the archives page).
If you would like to make a specific request, please email archivesandheritage@cambridge.org.
Tips for making a request
There is no overall guide or list of all the past examination publications held. This is because every session, from the 1870s to the present, is unique with its own archive of syllabuses, question papers, reports etc. For this reason, when making a request for a particular item, please be aware of the following:
- There may be a number of different syllabuses per subject and there will be several question papers per session (For example, there are 5 GCSE Mathematics syllabuses for 1997).
- Some so-called 'question papers' may be coursework papers or case studies, so no 'question paper' will be available.
- Examiners’ reports were not produced for all examinations before 1980.
- Marking schemes were not widely produced before 2000 and, where they exist, they correspond to each question paper, not subject or syllabus.