As explained in our recent bulletins, where assessment was due but did not take place between 1 August 2020 - 31 August 2021, you will provide a unit-level Teacher Assessed Grade (U-TAG) judgement for your learners to be able to progress their certification claims this year. Externally assessed units eligible for a U-TAG will be submitted on a spreadsheet.

You can also refer to our guidance on U-TAGs and our 2-page Teacher Guidance for U-TAGs, which includes an infographic, as well as some of our frequently asked questions.  

Key information for internal assessment U-TAGs and re-submissions.

NEW: The functionality to input Z-Flags and U-TAGs for Internal assessments is now available. Please see our previously issued guidance for support on how to submit these.

Guiding principles:

• Only learner evidence from 1 August 2020 to 31 August 2021 can be used to inform U-TAGs.
• If a learner wishes to improve an awarded U-TAG, they may resubmit the unit with a new assignment in 21/22, which should be assessed as normal. The resubmission grade would not be classified as a U-TAG, and therefore should be submitted without a ‘Z’ flag. 
• If no resubmission opportunity was available (due to COVID) after a planned assessment was completed in 20/21, learners can complete resubmissions against the same assignment brief(s) this academic year*. 

*All other rules of resubmission will still apply (meeting the eligibility requirements, working independently, and having 15 days to complete the work).

Key information for external assessment U-TAGs and re-sits

Please check your EOL mailbox, as we have now sent spreadsheets to the named Point of Contact for externally assessed units (where the entry was made but the assessment did not take place). Please check with colleagues if you have not received this or contact our customer services team if you need this re-sent.

You will need to populate the U-TAG within the sheet and ensure you return it to resultsresolution@pearson.com by 10 November 2021 with the subject heading “BTEC - External Assessment U-TAG".  

Please note, some spreadsheets have been re-sent so please check your EOL mailbox and use the most recent spreadsheet. We issued you with some additional information about the spreadsheets in our communication sent on Friday 15 October.

Please note, some spreadsheets have been re-sent so please check your EOL mailbox and use the most recent spreadsheet. We issued you with some additional information about the spreadsheets in our communication sent on Friday 15 October.

Guiding principles:

• Only learner evidence from 1 August 2020 to 31 August 2021 can be used to inform U-TAGs.
• If a learner wishes to improve a U-TAG, the only option is to take a Pearson-set and marked (live) external assessment in 2021/22.
• The U-TAG does not count as one of the learner’s attempts and the highest grade/points will be applied to the certification claim.

Releasing U-TAGs to learners

Once you have submitted your U-TAGs on the system, you are permitted to give these U-TAG judgements to your learners. However, please ensure that you make it clear that the grades are subject to Pearson Quality Assurance and will not be finalised until 13 January 2022.

This is different to the process used in summer 2021 (where you were not permitted to release these before results day), as we believe it would be beneficial for your learners to understand their progress earlier in the academic year, to inform any resit choices. We have also looked to align with other VTQ Awarding Organisations to support consistency. 

Can learners resit an assessment to improve a Q-TAG judgement from summer 2021?

Centres should ‘decline’ the Q-TAG grade and will be required to return the certificate. The learner’s Q-TAG will need to be converted to U-TAGs using the process outlined in our guidance. The learner will then be able to resit the relevant units, and a ‘full award claim’ can be added when ready for certification. Qualification grades in 2021/22 will be aggregated under the normal rules, outlined in the specification. 

Learners cannot add evidence to ‘increase’ a U-TAG judgement, any resits taken in 2021/22 must be conducted under the normal assessment rules.

If the learner is unhappy with the U-TAG you have provided them, there will be an Appeals process in place that will reflect the qualification-level Teacher Assessed Grade (Q-TAG) Appeals process.  

We worked closely with centres during the Q-TAG process in the last academic year, and many centres completed both the Standards Verifier (SV) and Q-TAG Quality Assurance activities. As unit-level judgments can be shared and explained with learners in advance of results day, as well as explaining the evidence used that informed the judgement, we anticipate there will be a very limited amount of appeals. The principles of the Appeals process from summer 2021 will apply.

Grounds for Centre Review   

The grounds upon which a student may request a centre review are:  

• The centre did not follow its procedure properly and consistently, and/or 
• The centre made an administrative error. 

Grounds for appeal

The grounds upon which a centre or student may appeal to Pearson (following completion of a centre review) are: 

• Pearson Error Appeal (Centre) – where the centre believes Pearson has made an error and has not issued the grade that the centre has requested. The centre must provide its reason for believing we have made an error. 
• Centre Process Appeal (Student) - where the student believes the centre has not followed its process for determining the U-TAG correctly, or it has made an admin error, or it has not followed the centre review/appeal process properly. This will also include where a student does not believe the centre has made appropriate provision for any reasonable adjustments they were entitled to or applied special considerations appropriately. 
• Centre Academic Judgement Appeal (Student) – Grade – where a student believes the centre’s U-TAG was unreasonable.
• Centre Academic Judgement Appeal (Student) - Range of evidence – where the student believes the centre has not been fair in its selection of evidence upon which it has based its U-TAG determinations. 

Requests for appeals on the grounds of academic judgement will only be considered by Pearson and not by centres. In these cases, an initial centre review must still be completed to ensure that the centre has not made any procedural or administrative errors.  

All student appeals to Pearson must be submitted by the centre. Students are not able to submit appeals directly to us. Student consent to centre reviews and appeals will be required. 
 
Further information on how to complete and submit appeals will be provided closer to the time, but we expect these will be submitted via email to us. 

Key dates 

• The Appeals window will open on 13 January 2022.
• The Appeals window will close on 14 February 2022.

We have now released BTEC Lead SV allocations and wanted to confirm the activity each centre will undertake.

Please refer to the BTEC Centre Guide to Quality Assurance for further information on Lead SV activity. 

We have received some queries from centres about the impact of the timing of the U-TAG process for units undertaken in 2020/21 on UCAS applications. This relates to learners completing in 2022 and applying to HE this academic year, given that it may not be possible to add the quality assured U-TAGs for year 1 units to the UCAS application form (like in normal years).

We have the following guidance:

• Please continue to list which unit titles students are studying as part of the BTEC. This is particularly imperative for STEM and health-related degrees, where unit-based offers can often be made. Some HEIs will reject applications outright if unit titles are not listed on the UCAS application form.
• We have already informed UK HEIs that we will send all the unit grades with the overall qualification grade (via UCAS) in summer as in normal years.
• It is not vital to also include year 1 unit grades on the application form for the vast majority of BTEC students (as we will send that information in summer, and HEIs recognise that not all centres deliver the key units in year 1). HEIs will largely be able to make offers (including unit-based ones) in the normal way.
• The exception, where some HEIs use year 1 unit grades to make an offer, is in cases where applicants have not met the GCSE entry requirements, and some will use the year 1 results to still make an offer to the student if they feel it compensates for their GCSE performance. In these cases, we recommend that centres enter the “Provisional year 1 BTEC unit grades” into the “Reference” part of the UCAS application form, which will be confidential and not seen by the student. You may also wish to do this for applicants with borderline predicted qualification grades.
• We will also be informing all UK HEIs that the timing of the U-TAG process means that not all applicants will be able to enter their year 1 unit grades to the UCAS application form as normal and remind them that they will be sent all the unit grades as normal in summer.
• Please ensure that applicants use the same name on their UCAS application form as on their BTEC registration (i.e. their legal name). This enables us to successfully identify students and send their results to UCAS on time. Please remind students not to use nicknames or change the way hyphenated surnames appear for example.

All BTEC external assessments for 2021/22 are expected to go ahead.   

We have released our provisional summer 2022 timetables for centre feedback. You can find these on our provisional timetables web page.  

Any feedback on these provisional timetables should be sent to timetables@pearson.com before Friday 22 October 2021. Once these timetables are final, they will be published in the BTEC External Assessment Overview document, found on our timetables web page.

Please note, the deadline for this activity was 30 September. This is now a matter of some urgency as it indicates your acceptance of our Terms and Conditions for BTEC qualifications (Tech Award, BTEC L2 and L3) and is required for certification to take place. 

You must submit your 2021/22 Annual Centre Declaration as soon as possible if you have not yet done so. This is available for you to download from Edexcel Online as well as the Quality Assurance web page. 

You will need to use your centre email address (as is shown on Edexcel Online) as an electronic signature and save as a Word document. You will then be able to return to the Edexcel Online page and upload the completed document using the upload link there. If there is an error with signatures on your ACD it will be removed, and you will be contacted to upload a corrected version. The activity is not complete until a correctly signed version is uploaded.

Please note, there is a 6MB limit on file size which is why we recommend a Word document and email signatures. You may need to click on the template link first before uploading your finished document, even if you have used the template from the Quality Assurance page, just to ensure the upload has worked.

Please ensure you do not submit the ACD via email or the Support Portal.

If you need further support to complete you Annual Centre Declaration, you can access our video tutorial, or our guide on our website.

Each week, the Pearson Quality Advisor Team hold a one-hour open forum session that is free for you to attend. We will provide a short update and will then devote our time to answering some of the frequent questions in relation to Quality Assurance.

While our Portal is the best place for more detailed or centre specific queries, these quick catch-up sessions are an ideal way to get hold of answers and explanations in relation to current activities.   

Please use the booking link to select a suitable time and date to attend a session. These sessions will continue to run through to December 2021.

WBL Handbooks 

WBL Handbooks are now available and can be found on our website.  

Centre Self-Assessment and supporting guidance document 

Following a review and update of our supporting materials, the Centre Self-Assessment (CSA) is now available. We would encourage you to complete your CSA as soon as possible. This will enable you to be prepared for your first Lead Standards Verification activity. Documents can be found on our website.

If you have already completed an ACD for your BTEC programmes, you do not need to complete the CSA. Please make the ACD available for your WBL Lead Standards Verifier (LSV) or your Pearson Quality Assurance advisor once complete.

Training events 

We are starting to finalise our events for this academic year. More information will be released in the Autumn term, but for those of you delivering Construction and Digital you’ll find the dates to our live Q&A Networks below.  

Autumn Term Q&A Network Sessions 

These half termly Q&A sessions with the Sector Manager and Subject Advisor will give you the opportunity to ask questions, discuss with other tutors your experience with delivering the T Level and share good practice. Details and weblinks to register onto our networking events are below. 

Construction:  

• 30 November 2021 at 13:00-14:00  

Digital: 

• 1 December 2021 at 13:00-14:00

Student Registration 

Providers are now able to make student registrations onto the Construction and Digital Technical Qualifications for cohorts commencing this academic year. 

The standard registration window will close on 1 November, with late registrations starting on 2 November. A support video on how to make registrations and manage student details can be found on our Provider page. 

Student Entries - November 2021 Series and Occupational Specialism - Summer 2022 Series 

Entries for the Core Component Assessments for the November 2021 Series and the Occupational Specialism Assessment for the summer 2022 are open. A support video on how to make entries is available via the Engagement Hub. 

Please remember, you must make an entry for every student wishing to enter the assessment.  

Providers wishing to make entries for re-sits please ensure you are familiar with the re-sit rules. These can be found in the TQ Specification, or you can use our ‘assessment, results and re-sits' support video, which can be found on the Provider page.  

If you need to make any entries for students to resit the ESP component only, please add your entries data to the template recently provided and return it to eprocessing@pearson.com.

Newly registered learners for 2021/2022 academic year should not be entered for any November 2021 assessments. Please note, we are now in the ‘late entry’ period. 

2021 Providers 

For centres commencing delivery this September 2021, do not forget to take advantage of the support available to you, tutors and Exams Officers:

• Introduce T Levels to your team with this short webcast.
• Training events and Q&A Networks noted above.
• The COURSE MATERIALS tab for each TQ has teaching, learning and assessment materials; plus, administration materials.
• The ENGAGEMENT HUB on the Provider page has our training archive, plus several short support videos on administration processes for T Levels including: "Assessment, results and resits", "How to make a registration", "How to make an entry", and "How to manage learner details".

Planning for 2022 Recruitment 

Some of you have asked about information to include in your college prospectus and at recruitment fairs. Our student webpage has several resources designed to support you when recruiting students, this includes:

• Student Journey: showing your students what their two-year T Level journey could look like.
• Qualification Descriptions: a high-level look at the qualification, the skills taught and progression opportunities – perfect to include in your college prospectus.
• Student case studies: live examples of T Level students.

The #ProtectStudentChoice campaign focuses on the Department for Education’s current review of post-16 qualifications at Level 3, which puts government funding at risk for many applied general qualifications such as BTECs. The letter warns that “many young people will be adversely affected by this proposal, but disadvantaged students have the most to lose”. 

Here is Pearson's response to the #ProtectStudentChoice campaign, and here is the petition you can sign to support the campaign to guarantee BTECs will continue to play a major role in the qualifications landscape.

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

For information and entry deadlines for the autumn 2021 exam series, please visit our October/November exam series web page.

Do sign up to receive our regular Pearson Qualifications GQ Bulletin on our website, where you will also be able to read past issues.