Vocational Qualifications Rebate Fees FAQs

Following a review of all expected costs associated with the awarding of vocational qualification grades this summer and allowing for additional costs incurred, rebates will be passed back to customers who had qualifications awarded this summer.  

• A 6% rebate for BTEC Level 2 and Level 3 qualifications. 
• A 20% rebate for Functional Skills qualifications. 

We have established the costs associated with this year’s extraordinary awarding process.  These include expected costs incurred for the delivery of the qualifications which required a range of different processes including internal and external assessment, and additional costs to ensure learners received accurate and fair grades to enable them to move to the next stage of their lives.   

Registration fees for our Vocational Qualifications (including BTEC, Work-Based Learning, Higher Nationals) are paid at the start of the course and cover the full delivery of the qualification.  Aspects of delivery support and assessment covered by your registration fee include; Approval and Support visits and activities, Standards Verifcation activities, Regional Pearson Quality Advisor assistance for Quality Nominees, support materials including Authorised Assignment Briefs, Sample Marked Learner Work, annual centre assessor training and online training, external assessment, Lead Examiner reports, Results Plus analysis services and ‘access to scripts’ services. 

The additional costs covered the set up processes to establish a new grade submission system, the adaptation of assessment for vocational qualifications, additional guidance and support for Exams Officers and Quality Nominees, online network events and support materials for learning to continue remotely while schools and colleges were closed.   

We also took the decision to make payments to contracted examiners and Standards Verifiers who were due to be involved in the assessment process for the summer series. 

Please find more details on the fees for our 2020 awarding process here. 

Any rebate credit due will be applied to your account (not cash) and is available for immediate use for new registrations and/or courseware. Should you wish to offset this against future invoices, please submit a remittance in the usual way to cashrec@pearson.com. Further information on allocating payments via remittance advice is available here. Please note: the credit will be reflected on the account connected to the original invoice. 

Usually you can see all invoices and any credit notes in Edexcel Online (EOL), however in this case, the credit note for these rebates will not be visible on EOL. You will only be able to see this credit on your regular statement. You can access your statement using a recently launched tool called iPay. This gives you access to view and download financial documents (Invoices, Statements and Credit notes) yourself, without the need to ask us to send these documents to you. Please click here to register for iPay, and once registered click here to login. If you require any help or guidance in using iPay, please see iPay: Online Account FAQs. 

Please continue to visit our dedicated support pages for vocational qualifications, and follow us on Twitter @teachBTEC and @PearsonEdexcel to keep up to date with the latest news and support available to you.