As you will be aware, the Secretary of State for Education, Gavin Williamson, wrote to Ofqual on 13 January to request a joint consultation on alternative arrangements based on teachers’ assessment for student qualifications this year. The letter also confirmed that scheduled exams for vocational qualifications will no longer take place in February and March 2021. Their guidance issued last week still stands – that the January assessments for regulated vocational qualifications can continue, if deemed right to do so by individual centres. If you did not receive the email responding to Wednesday’s announcement, you can read it here.

In light of the information released as part of the consultation launched today, we can now confirm that the summer examinations for BTEC will also not go ahead. However, BTEC examinations that contribute to qualifications that include a Licence to Practise (Childcare) may still go ahead, and the consultation outcome will inform any alternative arrangements. We will be in touch with you directly if you run these qualifications.

We understand how difficult this uncertainty is for schools, colleges and particularly learners, and our priority is ensuring fairness for all BTEC learners. We are committed to working closely with Ofqual and DfE throughout this period, to ensure that no learners are disadvantaged, and those expecting to complete their qualification this year can progress.

Today, Ofqual have launched their consultation on the arrangements for awarding results to learners this year, you can find the full details on their website.

Last week, we wrote to centres following the DfE announcement that January exams should continue where centres judge it right to do so. Whilst we track the return of examination scripts, as you might expect, we have seen a reduction in attendance of learners for their BTEC examinations.

Please note, whilst we continue to operate under Ofqual’s Extended ERF, we will use the existing Special Consideration process to award external assessment results for learners who were due to complete on the basis of their January assessments, but were unable to take them. If you have learners due to complete in advance of the summer assessment opportunity (which will form part of the upcoming consultation) please let us know through the special considerations process. As a reminder, if learners do sit the exam, you will need to send answer scripts to us as normal. Please do not destroy answer scripts, or withhold them. They are evidence of learner achievement.

If you made entries for the January series but your learners are now not taking the exams, the entries do not need to be withdrawn. However, you must return the attendance registers to Pearson with the learners marked as absent so we know that the exams did not go ahead at your centre. You can do this in a few ways:

• via the Parcelforce yellow label service or
• by completing the register from Edexcel Online and sending via email to resultsresolution@pearson.com (details of how to export the register can be found here)
• Alternatively, if your exam is not going ahead, please email resultsresolution@pearson.com with your centre number and unit number of the exam not taking place. 

Please help us to make sure results are issued on time by letting us know as soon as possible.

At this time, all January exam papers that are not used should remain sealed in secure storage until the scheduled assessment date has passed. They can then be destroyed or used for teaching and learning.

If you had scheduled onscreen ‘on-demand’ assessments for BTEC First units during February and March, these no longer need to go ahead in line with the guidance issued by DfE that examinations in March and February should not go ahead. However, if you have scheduled any assessments during January, it is the decision of the centre whether to proceed or cancel them.

Functional Skills, Specialist Tests and EPA are permitted to continue.

If you have learners who are due to complete and certificate before Summer 2021 and who were absent from the January 2021 series, you can apply for Special Consideration. In order for learners to be eligible for Special Considerations, there will need to be the relevant exam entries and internal unit grades input onto Edexcel Online (EOL).

We will provide a further update for learners due to complete in summer 2021 (and beyond), who missed January exams or will no longer be able to take assessments in February and March, following outcomes of the Ofqual consultation.

Reduction of Internal Assessment

In December we announced that for some BTEC suites we would reduce the amount of optional assessment that learners would need to complete. We also indicated that we would consider the reduction of mandatory internal assessments.

In order to facilitate continued assessment remotely centres are now able to apply reduced assessment to internally assessed mandatory units. Please note that reductions of internal assessment does not apply to licence to practice qualifications.

In light the recent cancellation of exams and the forthcoming Ofqual consultation, we are awaiting further guidance on assessment and awarding in 2021 from Ofqual and DfE, including about any additional or alternative measures that can be put in place.

In the meantime, we encourage centres to continue with the delivering of teaching and learning and internal assessments where they can take place remotely. We understand that not all assessments can be delivered remotely. Please refer to the teaching and learning guidance for your sector, for guidance on remote delivery.

We can also confirm that several Level 3 BTEC Specialist qualifications in Engineering (including Advanced Manufacturing Engineering, Aerospace and Aviation Engineering, Rail Engineering, Composites Engineering and Machining) can have the same adaptations applied as the BTEC Nationals RQF (2016) suite.

Reduced internal assessments for mandatory and/or optional units is available as follows:

BTEC RQF Nationals (2016–2020)

BTEC QCF Nationals 2010

BTEC Firsts

BTEC Tech Awards

Please refer to the guidance for ‘within-component’ reduction of internal assessment for these qualifications.

Licence to Practice qualifications, including Childcare, Dental and Sport

Where qualifications in childcare are licence to practice, the reduced assessment does not apply to mandatory content, please refer to guidance available with regards to adaptations, and simulated activities, for level 3 and level 2.

For Dental qualifications, no adaptations are currently permitted.

For Sport qualifications linked to CIMSPA, as it stands no reduced assessment applies, but we will keep this under review, and update you if this changes.

We can confirm our Standards Verification process is going ahead as planned in 2020/21, and we have begun the process of allocating Standards Verifiers (SV). We want to ensure that centres have the appropriate support to enable certification release, and as such your SV will look to sample available work between January and May to validate standards maintenance.

We understand the uncertainty at the moment, whilst we await the outcomes of the upcoming consultation. However, our intention to continue with standards verification this year is for two reasons.

Firstly, this is to support you, to ensure that our BTEC centres have a full awareness of the actions they may need to take in order to receive results. Our SVs will be able to support you, whatever the final situation is this year regarding the issuing of results.

Secondly, it is in order to be able to verify, in line with our sampling guidance, the assessment decisions that teacher assessors have made on assessments that have taken place, acknowledging that we have many adaptations in place, and the continuing challenges regarding teaching, learning and assessment.

As such we are also committed to our current timelines. However, if you have specific concerns, please discuss these with your SV.

Please see our BTEC assessment and verification guidance pages for further information.

Please ensure you have checked and completed any ‘Meeting Learner Needs’ before the cutoff date of 31 January 2021 for any requirements you may have identified under any BTEC QCF Framework.

Further guidance can be found here.

The Secretary of State has advised that assessments for Functional Skills and ESOL should continue to proceed with protective measures put in place to ensure they are conducted in line with Public Health England measures.

Where assessment can take place online and where students are ready to take the assessment in the coming weeks, the assessment can continue as planned. The letter from the Secretary of State does not specifically refer to ‘paper-based’ assessments and we are awaiting clarification on this point.

For learners who are unable to access assessment, the guidance from the DfE is that there will be alternative assessment arrangements put in place, following the outcomes of the consultation. We will update you as more information becomes available.

At the start of the 2020/21 academic year, we issued a guide to teaching and learning for Higher Nationals which took into consideration public health guidance and how teaching could continue either face to face or remotely this academic year.

Our guidance will still be relevant for centres now delivering Higher National qualifications under significant restrictions. You can also find further support about remote delivery on HN Global.

We will continue to monitor the situation in light of further announcements from the DfE and Ofqual, and we will communicate any updates on teaching, learning and Assessment, as soon as we have more detail to share.

Due to the exceptional circumstances everyone is facing, we will remove the deadline (31 January 2021) for submitting applications for permanent Distance Learning approval. We understand the need for centres to deliver remotely at this time. If you intend to move permanently to fully online delivery after the lockdown (i.e. not blended delivery), then please do submit your application following the process that can be found here.

Following on from Jennifer Coupland’s announcement, which can be viewed here, all flexibilities to enable End-Point Assessment will continue until the end of August. The Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IFATE) have confirmed that there will be no withdrawal of any flexibility before May 1st and will provide at least three months’ notice of any decision to terminate an agreed flexibility.

To support apprentices during this time, the “EQA guidance for all standards document” (located within ACE360 Knowledgebase) remains current and operational.

Should you have any apprentices who are in the Approved for EPA stage and require onscreen testing, we do have an interim remote invigilation solution to support you. Further details can be found here.

In line with Ofqual’s Extended ERF, we published our Work Based Learning (WBL) Sector Guidance documents in October 2020. These documents remain relevant and valid for your WBL qualifications and detail the available adaptations to support you during this time.

Standards Verification will continue to take place remotely to ensure timely certification for your learners. Please inform your allocated Standards Verifier (SV) if you are using any adaptations to ensure we retain sufficient oversight. Your SV will also be able to support you with any questions you have.