Find the specification document on the awarding body's website, check its specification code and year of first teaching, then compare the textbook's contents page against the specification's own content headings. That's the whole method. It takes longer to describe than to actually do, and it's the single most useful skill for a family teaching outside a school, because nobody else is going to check this for you.

This matters more than whether a textbook is "endorsed" — see do-you-need-the-endorsed-textbook for why endorsement isn't the requirement it can feel like. What actually matters is whether the resource in front of you matches the exact specification your child will be examined on. Here's how to check it properly.

Step 1: find the specification, not a summary of it

Go directly to the awarding body's own website — AQA, OCR or Pearson Edexcel — and search for the subject and qualification level. Every current GCSE and A-level specification is published free as a PDF, with no login or payment required. This is worth doing even if you already have a textbook that claims to match, because the specification is the primary source and everything else, including the textbook, is written against it.

Avoid relying on a summary from a forum, a blog, or a bookshop's product description to tell you what's on the specification. Go to the document itself.

Step 2: check the specification code

Every specification has a unique code — a short number or code string specific to that subject, level and board. For example, AQA's GCSE Maths specification is 8300. This code appears:

  • On the front page of the specification document itself
  • On past papers and mark schemes for that subject
  • Often on exam timetables

If a textbook, revision guide or online resource states a specification code, check it against the code on the actual specification document for your child's subject and board. If it doesn't state one, that's itself worth noting — it makes the resource harder to verify and worth a more careful look at the next two steps.

Step 3: check the year of first teaching

Specifications change over time, sometimes with only modest content shifts and sometimes substantially. Every specification document states its year of first teaching (sometimes called first assessment) — the academic year from which that version of the specification applies.

Compare that year against:

  • The textbook or revision guide's publication date
  • Any specification year printed on its cover, title page or online product description

A book published well before the current specification's first-teaching year is very likely written for the previous version. This is the single most common way families end up teaching or revising the wrong content, and it's an easy trap: a superseded edition can look almost identical to the current one on a shelf or in a search result, right down to the cover design and the board's name.

Step 4: compare content headings directly

Once the code and year check out, open the specification's contents or subject-content section — this lists the topics, themes or units that will actually be examined, usually with numbered headings (for example, "3.1 Number", "3.2 Algebra" in a maths specification). Open the textbook's contents page alongside it and check, heading by heading, that:

  • Every topic on the specification appears somewhere in the textbook
  • The textbook isn't built around topics the specification doesn't require (not disqualifying on its own, but worth noticing — time spent on non-examinable content is time not spent elsewhere)

This step takes fifteen to twenty minutes per subject and is the part families most often skip, because a code and a year feel like enough confirmation. They usually are — but a direct content comparison is what catches the rare case where a code matches an older or regional variant of a specification with genuinely different content.

A quick checklist

Worth keeping somewhere you'll actually see it before buying:

  • Found the specification on the awarding body's own website (not a summary)
  • Confirmed the specification code matches exactly
  • Checked the year of first teaching against the resource's publication date
  • Compared the specification's content headings against the resource's contents page
  • Noted anywhere the two don't line up, and decided whether it matters for this subject

Watch for these warning signs

  • A cover that names the board but not a code or year. Not automatically wrong, but worth extra checking.
  • A revision guide marketed as "all boards" for a subject where boards genuinely differ in content, not just style — treat these as general practice material, not a primary resource.
  • Secondhand copies, which are often significantly cheaper but are exactly where a superseded-specification edition is most likely to turn up. Always check the year on a secondhand book before relying on it.
  • A specification code that's close but not identical to the one on your child's exam timetable or past papers — boards sometimes run more than one specification variant for the same subject (for example, separate sciences versus combined science), and the codes differ.

A worked example

It helps to see the method applied once, in full. Say you're checking a GCSE Combined Science revision guide against the AQA specification.

  1. Find the specification. Search AQA's website for "GCSE Combined Science Trilogy" and download the current specification PDF.
  2. Check the code. The specification's front page shows its code — different from AQA's separate sciences specifications, so this step alone rules out a mismatch between Combined Science and Triple Science material, which look similar on a shelf but cover different content depth.
  3. Check the year. The specification states its year of first teaching. If the revision guide you're holding was published two years before that date, it's very likely written for the previous version of the specification, even if the cover still says "AQA."
  4. Compare content headings. The specification lists topic groups such as biology, chemistry and physics sub-topics with numbered references. Open the guide's contents page and confirm every listed sub-topic appears somewhere, and note if the guide includes substantial content — a topic, a set of equations — that doesn't appear on the specification at all, which may simply be enrichment, or may be a sign it's matched to a different specification variant.

That's the entire process, repeated for each subject. It rarely takes longer than the time already spent choosing which textbook to buy.

When to go back and check again

Specifications don't change every year, but it's worth re-confirming the code and first-teaching year if: your child is resitting after a gap of more than a year or two, you're buying a resource secondhand, or you've inherited textbooks from an older sibling or a friend's family. A book that was correct three years ago may no longer be.

The bottom line

This is a five-to-twenty-minute check per subject, and it's the practical version of "cross-check the textbook against the exam board" that most parents are really asking about. The specification code confirms you're looking at the right qualification. The first-teaching year confirms you're looking at the right version of it. The content-heading comparison confirms the resource actually covers what will be examined. If anything doesn't line up, or the specification itself leaves you unsure, the awarding body's student and parent support pages — AQA's, OCR's and Pearson Edexcel's — are the right place to confirm directly, as of 2026.