Centres must achieve the following before overall results can be issued for BTEC qualifications this academic year:

1) All internally assessed unit grades must be reported in Edexcel Online (EOL):

• U-TAGs (which should have been submitted earlier this year), to replace ‘reduced’ unit assessments from 2020/21 and also any other assessment that could not take place last academic year, including for external assessment must be reported by centres.
• Streamlined grades (where only one LA/LO needs to be assessed) must be reported by centres
• Grades for internally assessed units completed in full in 2021/22 academic year.

2) Standards Verification must be completed and showing as ‘Released’; sample sizes have been adjusted in 2022 to reflect the availability of non-streamlined assessment. Centres must submit samples to Standards Verifiers (SV) or risk not receiving results on time, which could jeopardise UCAS applications. Please work with your allocated SV to complete sampling as soon as possible, as the deadline for first samples has now passed.

3) Correct unit combinations claimed: Centres must ensure that all required units are reported for internal assessment, and relevant external assessments are sat in the summer series (or have been achieved via a U-TAG or previous sitting). You can check the correct combination in the course specification, or using our grade calculators.

4) Award Claim made by 5 July: Centres must make a ‘full award claim’ once all internally assessed units are input. This must be completed by 5 July where results are required on the August results day(s). Claims awaiting results of externally assessed units sat in summer 2022 will appear as ‘Pending’ until the results are issued in August.

Important

1) Alongside external assessment results for summer examinations, the only grades Pearson will provide are ‘deferred aegrotats’ (assessed grades) for assessments where Special Consideration has been approved due to absence. This will only be provided at the point of certification, so please ensure completion dates are showing accurately.

2) ‘Reduced assessment’ (advised in early 2020/21 academic year) was later replaced by ‘U-TAGs’, therefore centres must ensure all grades are submitted with the relevant flags in the system. Please contact us urgently if you have not submitted all required U-TAGs.

3) Claims for qualifications that have an incorrect combination of units, or where other issues appear, will be reported as ‘ineligible’ - please work with us to resolve issues in advance of results day(s) by resolving eligibility issues as soon as possible. We will do our best to pre-empt issues for learners we expect to claim certification this year and we are proactively contacting centres to advise of possible issues.

4) If a learner has ‘topped-up’ from a qualification awarded a Q-TAG last year, centres must report unit grades to replace the Q-TAG, via the U-TAG (unit-level) process. Where U-TAGs have not been provided, qualification results cannot be awarded. Please contact us urgently if you have not submitted all required U-TAGs.

5) If learners had a ‘Meeting Local Needs’ (MLN) unit added in a previous year and has since ‘topped up’, a further MLN application is also required for the larger size qualification as this transfer does not happen automatically.

For further support, check out our support articles on BTEC Eligibility:

Checking Claims for Eligibility
Checking Eligibility Form Queries

Receiving and storing secure assessment materials

When you can expect to start receiving standard question papers: 

For exams taking place 9 May-7 June, materials will start to arrive in centres from 25 April.

For exams taking place from 8 June, materials will start to arrive in centres from 17 May.

The yellow label service will be in place for the summer series for centres in England to return BTEC scripts. Attendance Registers and labels will start to arrive in centres from 27 May.

Secure Download assessments can be accessed from our Secure Test space. To find out more about secure storage, please take a look at our exam storage support article.

Accessing materials that are provided electronically (‘secure download’)

Please check how exam materials will be sent to you – if any are available via ‘secure download, you will need to visit our Secure Test space. You will only be able to access secure materials for assessments that you have entries for. 

Requesting PDF versions to make copies onto coloured paper

You must request this by contacting our customer services team. Based on feedback, we are looking into the provision of colour paper copies for centres.

If you identify you have not received assessment materials

Contact our customer services team if you identify any issues with assessment materials on the day of the exam. In some cases, we will be able to securely send these to you.

When to schedule onscreen exams to ensure results are issued by August results day

You should schedule onscreen tests to be taken by 17 June to ensure they are marked, and results issued by August results day.

Managing absences on the day of the exam

Please review our managing absences support materials on the Teaching and Assessment pages.

Notifying Pearson of malpractice or maladministration

As an approved Pearson centre, you are required to notify us of any suspected or confirmed maladministration or malpractice.

Returning assessment materials to Pearson safely

Assessments will be returned to Pearson electronically (via One Drive) or via ParcelForce. Please follow the instructions for the relevant assessments. Please also take care to only include the required materials – including other materials can cause issues at our processing centre.

Please see our Exams Officer support pages for more information on conducting external assessments. 

In order to minimise your administration workload later this year, you may find it useful to check BTEC learners' completion dates in EOL to ensure that they accurately reflect when your learners will certificate. We would expect for learners certificating in summer 2022 to have a completion date between 1 June and 31 August 2022. Our 'Update Learner Detail' support article shows how you can amend these dates in EOL through each learner's record.

It is helpful to keep all learner data accurate; please withdraw BTEC learners via EOL that are no longer planning to complete the course they are registered on. It may be possible that these learners are eligible for a smaller sized qualification based on the units they have achieved so far. If so, please transfer to these smaller qualifications and claim a full award instead. You can find further information about these processes in our 'Edexcel Online: Withdrawing Learner Registrations' and 'Registrations: Transfers' support articles.

Following the implementation of the OneDrive submission process for the January series, we have decided to continue its use for those units in the summer series. Further details can be found in our recent summer 2022 submission method communication.

We have reviewed the feedback submitted and for the upcoming series we are making the following changes/improvements:

• No limit on user access for uploading learner work.
• Centre folders will be named with the unit code, assessment name and exam/submission date.
• Individual learner folders will be created on your behalf.
• An additional checklist will be included within the Online Attendance Register for centres to confirm if learner work is completed/uploaded.
• We’ve simplified how learners should save their work.
• The completed learner authentication forms no longer need uploading.
• The Administrative Support Guides (ASG) will reflect all changes.
• A learner handout for guidance on the correct file types and naming convention from the ASG will be included in each External Assessment folder.
• A notification email confirming successful upload will be issued.

We are aiming to send the links out to centres at the end of April/early May. If you haven’t already, we would be grateful if you would complete this form with all contacts requiring access to your centre folder to support the upload of learner work.

We have launched a range of new Quality Assurance guidance and bitesize videos for our BTEC Tech Awards from 2022. These qualifications include new moderation processes for internal assessments, and benefit from a streamlined approach to BTEC Quality Assurance principles which will greatly reduce administration. Check out the Quality Assurance quick guide, and our full Centre Guide to Quality Assurance for all the details.

To support you in understanding the key processes, we also have a range of bitesize videos available in the BTEC Tech Awards 2022 section on our Quality Assurance webpage covering:

• Introduction to Quality Assurance
• Completing the Assessment Record
• Guide to applying Mark Schemes
• Moderation Process

We have also created a new Tech Award Assessment Record template that can be found in the teaching and learning materials section of each qualification page and on the BTEC Assessment and IV templates page.

If you have any questions related to the new BTEC Tech Awards, please contact your Subject Advisor or Vocational Quality Assurance Manager via the Pearson Support Portal. 

We are aware that some of the BTEC alumni, who completed their BTEC Level 3 National in 2021 and received a Qualification Teacher Assessed Grade (Q-TAG), may be applying for HE in the UK or internationally for the coming academic year or may plan to apply in subsequent academic years.

Whilst UK universities were able to waive unit requirements for 2021, due to the disruption caused by the pandemic, we know that this is not the case for applying to HE in 2022 onwards. Therefore, we recommend that you retain assessment records relating to BTEC Level 3 Nationals for 2021, principally the assessment plan with details of:

• Units studied
• Unit grades not on EOL (which may already exist).

This means we will be able to work with you to support any BTEC 2021 alumni with their HE applications in the UK or internationally. We will be able to provide alumni (that require it) a letter detailing their notional unit grades, which we can work out once we have confirmation of units studied and any existing unit grades you may have.

Please be reassured that this will not involve or require you to retrospectively determine U-TAGs or retain learner work beyond the Ofqual requirement above. We would be grateful if you could retain the assessment plan as a minimum, so we can correctly identify which units students studied as part of their course, when we provide a letter.  It is advised that you retain the assessment plan for as long as possible, we expect most queries from alumni over the next 2-3 years, with diminishing queries in subsequent years. 

Quality Nominee summer networking events return

Please join us at one of our online events in June where we will talk through the quality assurance cycle for 2022/23 and the new Centre Guides to support you through the process. We will also give you an opportunity to discuss with colleagues what's worked well this year and what you will be looking to develop in 2022/23.

Events are split by suite i.e. we are offering separate events for the redeveloped Tech Awards being rolled out in schools with effect from Sep 2022. Places are limited to one per centre and the events can be booked via the Training from Pearson page (filter by BTEC) or the QN Hub (under live events). 

Pearson’s May E-Bulletin was published and included the following:

• Q&A Networks and Training events
• Fees for 2022-23
• Provider Approval and Provider Monitoring
• Draft Key dates Schedule 2022-24

As we continue to collect feedback from students from around the world about our Higher National qualifications, we’d like to ask for your help sharing the message. This is also an opportunity for you to get to know your students better, as we will create a bespoke report for every centre where eight or more students complete the survey. The Pearson Annual Student Survey is open now until 15 June 2022, and you can find out more about this on HN Global.

Reminder - BTEC Level 3 Diploma for Residential Childcare - Optional units

On 24 March, we shared a clarification note regarding the optional units for the Pearson BTEC Level 3 Diploma for Residential Childcare (England) (601/5402/0). As a reminder, for learners to be eligible for certification:

• Total number of credits that must be achieved = 61
• Number of mandatory credits that must be achieved = 53
• Minimum number of optional credits (minimum three units) that must be achieved = 8

Changes to the Vocational and Technical Qualifications Contingency Regulatory Framework (VCRF)

Ofqual have released updated guidance, detailing changes which were permitted throughout the COVID-19 period. Given that public health restrictions are no longer in place, these adaptations are no longer necessary for the 2022/23 academic year onwards. Our webpage detailing the adaptions guides will be removed shortly.  

Adding a Purchase Order to ACE

To help assist our billings team, please ensure that any purchase orders are listed within ACE360. Please note that only Super Admin and Admin users have this function on their profile. To update the purchase order field, please refer to page 45 of the ACE360 LTP Guide.

12 Week EPA Period

A reminder that as of the 1 April 2022, there are no extensions allowed to the EPA period. Please ensure that apprentices who have a status of “Approved for EPA” are booked in for their assessment within the designated end-point assessment period. Further information on specific assessment periods, please review the Apprenticeship Standard Assessment Plan.

Pauses between assessment methods/components during the EPA period

Pauses are allowed post gateway and is used when the EPA plan sets out a particular timeframe within methods and/or between components. This flexibility has been retained post 1st April 2022; however, pauses should be minimised as far as practicable to not disadvantage the employer or apprentice. This should not exceed a period of six months.

Recruitment of Independent end-point assessors

We have a number of roles for Associates to be involved with End Point Assessment assessments. If you are interested, please take a look at our live vacancies page. 

For further information on our general qualifications for 2022, please visit our summer 2022 support page. We will be updating this page regularly.

Please sign up to receive our regular Pearson Qualifications Bulletin on our website where you’ll also be able to read past issues.