Exams officers

Your monthly update (September 2024)

Below you’ll find your monthly update for September 2024, including key upcoming dates for your diary for reasonable adjustments, post-results and assessment and delivery support, and more.

Important reminders

Your monthly update (September 2024)

Below you’ll find your monthly update for September 2024, including key upcoming dates for your diary for reasonable adjustments, post-results and assessment and delivery support, and more.

Updated assessment timetable for 2024-25 and 2025-26 

We’ve updated our assessment timetable for all CACHE and V Cert qualifications with an assessment for 2024-25 and 2025-26. Follow this link to view the timetable and supporting documentation.

Since the consultation period, we’ve: 

• amended the name of this document from ‘External Assessment Timetable’ to ‘Assessment Timetable’ to include key dates relating to the non-examined assessment (NEA) component of our V Cert qualifications 

• changed dates of some of our V Cert assessments to avoid clashes with GCSE exams. 

The qualifications that have been impacted by this change are listed below: 

If you have any queries on this, please contact our Assessment Delivery team via email at [email protected]. 

Important reminders

V Certs 

• Our 2024-25 V Cert Non-Exam Assessment (NEA) brief will be released on 1 October. Find out more.

• Our standardisation pack will also be available on the Portal on 1 October, and you must complete the relevant training by 28 February 2025. These training materials support your delivery teams by looking in more detail at the NEA tutor guidance document and marking bands, giving you the opportunity to discuss marks and develop a standardised approach. This will support you to feel confident that you are marking consistently and are prepared in advance for the 2024-25 assessment window.   

Following results release on 22 August 2024 for our Level 1/2 Technical Awards, we’ve provided the following feedback documents to support you in understanding your learners’ performance in the summer 2024 assessments and to assist you with the delivery of assessments in summer 2025: 

• The Chief Examiner and Moderator report – This is an overview of the performance of all learners who took the assessment in Summer 2024. Visit the individual qualification page on our website, click ‘assessment materials’, and you’ll find this report within the Summer 24 – Assessment pack. 

• Final Moderation report – This is a bespoke report produced by the moderator who moderated your learners’ work. One report is available for each qualification per cohort and is an opportunity for centres to see areas where they performed well and areas they can develop this session. You can find your final moderation report in the results area of the Portal. Search the batch and click on the drop-down arrow to the right of any data line, you’ll then be able to select the final moderation report from a drop-down list of reports. Please see our Portal user guide for more information 

We’re unable to expand on feedback beyond the contents of these two documents. 

Functional Skills 

• Take a look at our schedule for introducing new Functional Skills assessment papers. 
• Entry Level maths vocabulary lists for assessors are now available upon booking for all assessments, to help prepare your learners for the vocabulary associated with the contexts within the assessments. Find out more. 

Changes to EQA review deadlines for summer 2025 

From summer 2025 onwards, we’ll be bringing forward the completion date for EQA reviews for VTQs to 30 June. When arranging your EQA review, please ensure that EQA activity has been completed by the end of June to ensure your learners receive timely results for the qualifications in scope. If you have any queries, please contact [email protected]. 

Fees and pricing for 2024-25 and late registration fees 

We recently communicated an update to our fees and pricing for 2024-25, and also wanted to make you aware that we're introducing a late registration fee from 1 August 2024 for all of our qualifications (with the exception of V Certs and Functional Skills, and T Level late fees which are calculated differently). As this fee will apply to any new learner registrations with a learner start date of 1 August 2024 onwards, if you have any outstanding learner registrations to make, we recommend that you make these before 1 August 2024. Find out more.

New practice papers for Functional Skills English 

We’ve launched new practice papers for Functional Skills English:

Paper-based practice assessments are now available across all levels in Reading and Writing, supporting learners to prepare for their Functional Skills English assessment.

Onscreen practice papers are available at Levels 1 and 2, allowing learners to prepare for their assessment using our onscreen platform, Surpass.

Each paper has been carefully chosen by our Assessment team to provide an authentic assessment experience. Find out more.

Changes to fees for CACHE qualifications

Find out more about fees that are applied if learners are booked under incorrect themes on our CACHE qualifications.

Upcoming events

Delivery support events 

Sign up to delivery support events for V Certs from our Provider Development team, which provide opportunities for networking, and explore topics such as preparing to teach and preparing to assess.   

Functional Skills 

All of our live English and maths training events for the autumn term are ready for registrations, sign up now. You can also register for our Digital Functional Skills and Essential Digital Skills training events and drop-in clinics to answer any queries and support your onboarding.   

New Assessor and Internal quality assurance (IQA) training

We’ve got several new upcoming Assessor and IQA training events, which provide a great opportunity to meet with assessment and IQA professionals and like-minded practitioners to expand your knowledge and understanding of IQA, assessment, and our qualifications. Book onto our Assessor or IQA events today. 

NCFE’s Professional Development Week

Our second NCFE Professional Development Week recently took place and was a huge success, with a range of informative CPD sessions covering topics from AI in education to supporting SEND learners. If you missed it or were unable to make the sessions, don't worry! You can recap all the sessions here.

Bite-size videos to support you

We’ll be creating a series of bite-size videos, some of which are already available on our YouTube channel, detailing some of the common themes or areas of difficulty, and will also provide updates to our Portal User Guide, accordingly.

Supporting administration staff

In acknowledgement of the high turnaround of centre staff dealing with NCFE’s administrative assessment processes, we would request that any centre with new or inexperienced staff, who may require support in enacting any of our Portal-related activities, contact [email protected], where one of the team will be glad to help signpost, integrate or demonstrate these processes directly.