BTEC FAQs

If learners are unable to take their assessment this January, they may be able to take the assessment at a later date. In the event that is not possible, we will put in place arrangements to ensure they are not disadvantaged.  

We will certificate any learner who was due to complete the programme in 2020/21 and is now unable to take their exams and has enough evidence to receive a certificate that they need for progression (this forms part of the existing 'special considerations' processes agreed with Ofqual). 

Entries do not need to be withdrawn. Please 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.  

We do not know yet whether withdrawing entries will impact students' eligibility for Special Consideration, in the event they do not have another opportunity to sit the assessment. Therefore, we would advise not withdrawing entries at this stage, so we can support you and your students appropriately. 
 
We will share further updates as soon as we have them. 
 
At this time, all question 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. 

Please don’t take any further action at present. However, please keep a record of learners who were entered and subsequently withdrawn. 

If you go ahead or not with the external assessments, please ensure you return the attendance register fully completed as soon as possible via the Parcelforce yellow label service.  These can be returned via Parcelforce or can be taken to your local Post Office.  

For ease, you can return all attendance registers in one parcel with all learners marked as absent if the exams aren’t going ahead.  

If you are unable to gain access to the attendance register (as you are not in your centre), please export the register from Edexcel Online and send via email to resultsresolution@pearson.com.  Details of how to export the AR can be found here.  
 
Alternatively, if the exam is not going ahead, please email resultsresolution@pearson.com with your centre number and unit number of the exam not taking place.

Entries must be made by the deadlines to ensure that the relevant materials are sent and received in time and in order for us to ensure we can mark, award and return results in line with published deadlines. Should DfE decide to cancel vocational assessments, entries will still be required by the deadlines in order to understand which learners are due to receive results. Learners without entries will not be able to receive results for assessments. If entries are made, and students cannot subsequently take the external assessment due to COVID-19, the Special Considerations process can be used. We are unable to accept Special Consideration requests if an exam entry is not made for the learner. 

We are continuing to work with DfE and Ofqual to ensure that BTEC learners are not disadvantaged. Whilst we await further information, should you have learners due to complete (certificate) using their January assessment outcomes, please contact us and we will be able to use the existing special consideration process to enable this; if they have not been able to take the assessment in January.   

If your learners are due to certificate in August 2021, we will keep you updated as soon as we know more regarding the summer external assessments. 

Any Question Papers that will not be used for the January 2021 series should be secured until after the exam window. After this period, these materials can either be used for mock exam purposes or securely destroyed. 

The Secretary of State has confirmed on 13 January that "exams for scheduled in February and March (including BTECs and other qualifications included in performance tables) it is no longer viable for these exams to go ahead". Ofqual will shortly be consulting on what the alternative assessment arrangements should be. 

If this is not already permitted in the existing adaptation guidance for the qualification, for learners to complete externally set tasks remotely, you will need to follow JCQ guidance regarding invigilation from another location other than your centre.   

We can confirm that there is an exemption in the lockdown regulations which would allow home invigilation where it is safe to do so. We are considering remote invigilation as an option to safeguard against the risks associated with COVID-19 and will shortly publish some guidance on how this can be facilitated. 

You must make full award claims when all of your internally assessed unit grades are submitted, this will enable the eligibility reporting to be initiated which will alert you to any issues with the combination of unit grades claimed, or any other issues. You should ensure that unit grades submitted align to any unit combinations outlined in the relevant specification. 

Assuming the learner was due to certificate this academic year, and that the May/June series was the final opportunity for the leaner to take the assessment (i.e the learner could not defer the external assessment), in line with the Special Considerations process, the centre would be able to apply and a grade would be calculated by the Awarding Organisation for the resit attempt. The highest grade would be carried forward to the qualification grade, in line with the grading information outlined in the specification.

We are working closely with Ofqual and DfE on our approach to awarding results this year. This week Ofqual are issuing a consultation on alternative assesment arrangements for vocational qualifications. This is expected to cover arrangements where examinations have not occurred, due to the disruption caused by the pandemic. Our commitment remains to ensure learners are not disadvantaged by the decision to run/not run exams this January. We will issue further information when available. 

The current guidance is to continue with assessment. 

Yes. With COVID-19 still impacting on you and your learners, we've created a series of Sector Guides designed to offer you guidance on how you might adapt delivery of BTEC qualifications. 

These guides cover the following qualifications as well as additional sector-specific Level 2 and Level 3 qualifications where appropriate: 

• BTEC Nationals 
• BTEC Firsts 
• BTEC Level 2 Technicals 
• BTEC Level 2 Industry Skills 
• BTEC Tech Awards 
• Work Skills, PSD, Personal Growth and Wellbeing 
  

Whilst we do not yet know yet what this academic year holds, particularly in relation to the full impact of Covid-19 on teaching and assessing BTEC, we recommend that you focus on the delivery of mandatory/core units/components for now, prioritising them over the delivery of optional units. This will aid learner progression in the event of any later disruption. Ideally, you would also be banking learner’s achievement on our system, as you deliver the course, rather than waiting to submit grades at the end of the academic year. 

If Centre Assessed Grades (CAGs) were not entered for the unit/component, you should continue to assess as normal following the guidance set out in the BTEC Centre Guide to Internal Assessment. 

Centres may continue to assess all Learning Aims, and as the guidance states, all the content still needs to be taught. You do not need to re-assess any Learning Aims which have already being assessed. Where there is outstanding assessment this can be assessed in line with the adaptation requirements, where applicable for the qualification.

Yes. The format of internal assessments for BTEC qualifications has always been flexible, and this can continue. For example, instead of requiring learners to write an evaluation or reflective journal you may wish to assess this through a viva voce or vlog. Whichever format you choose must enable learners to produce authentic and independent work. 

We have published guidance on delivering via a blended learning approach on our website.  

Yes. Assignments can be set remotely via a live or recorded online class to ensure all learners receive and access the assignment at the same time. 

We would not expect that you would be planning to assess your mid-flight learners on all optional units in their first year. Therefore, we would not expect that mid-flight learners would need to have the maximum reduced optional unit assessment adaptation.   

We will be releasing more information on our expectations and monitoring of this soon. 

All units that have been assessed should be banked on the system using the ‘interim claim’ function. It is not appropriate to remove grades for evidence that has been submitted. Learners that have submitted evidence for assessment, in line with the assessment plan should be assessed as planned, and this evidence should be available for Standards Verification if selected.

As teaching and learning is expected to take place for units that are claimed as ‘not assessed’ this year, we would not expect for learners to generate and submit evidence at a later date. 

You can find an update here on how adaptations to reduction of internal assessment can now apply (in non-licence to practise qualifications) to mandatory internally assessed units.

We will be issuing administration guidance on how to manage this in our systems, once we have the responses to the Ofqual consultation. For now, please keep a record of the units where you intend to reduce assessment, on your assessment plan, so your SV is aware of what assessment will or will not be available for sampling.

Yes, we have begun the process of allocating SVs. 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 to validate standards maintenance between January and May.

We are advising centres to submit their standards verification samples digitally using Pearson’s Digital Learner Work Transfer platform (DLWT) or their own file-share platform. 

It is unlikely that it will be possible to extend the window for SV sampling whilst ensuring timely completion of the certification process. This is due to the nature of the activities we will be looking to complete this year, including deferred calculation of CAGs from summer 2020, and calculations of the Reduced Optional Unit Assessment mitigations. However, if you have specific concerns, please discuss these with your SV.

A deferred calculated grade was issued for learners, due to complete in 2020/21 or later, who did not meet the minimum evidence thresholds for determining external results in summer 2020.  

Once full award claims are made, we will calculate grades for all entries marked as ‘Absent’ from the summer 2020 examination session, using the method that informed our review (PDF).   We will not be releasing deferred grade calculations following the outcome of standards verification as previously suggested. Grades will be calculated and released in line with the January series results day, or the June series results day (depending on when the full award claim is made). If learners choose to re-sit assessments in January, and/or June (prior to receiving their deferred calculated results), the highest grade will be applied to the qualification result.  

The calculated or deferred calculated result does not count as an attempt at an external assessment. 

We are working closely with Ofqual and the DfE to ensure that the standards set for January and Summer 2021 are aligned where appropriate to the principles that will underpin the General Qualifications approach. 

We have made some adaptations to our qualifications (as outlined in the Assessment Adaptations Guidance for BTEC Qualifications) to mitigate against some of the impact of the continued disruptions.

We continue to work closely with Ofqual and the DfE to look for other ways to account for any further disruption, including aligning where appropriate to any principles adaopted in General Qualifications.