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Service messages

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Updated on [14/10/2024]

Welcome to our service messages area. This area is regularly updated with the latest information about our products, qualifications, processes and more.

We’ll also send you a monthly newsletter where we’ll highlight any key updates, and you can click through to this webpage to read the full details. We recommend bookmarking this page so that you can check back regularly for any updates!

October 2024

Key dates and timetables
  • Remember that you must register your learners within 90 days of their start date to avoid late registration fees. Please ensure you add your learners’ correct end dates at the point of registration.
  • We wanted to remind you that from summer 2025 onwards, we’ll be bringing forward the completion date for EQA reviews to 30 June. Please contact your External Quality Assurer if you have any queries on this.
Qualification updates and withdrawals
  • View our latest Horizons document, featuring qualification updates and maintenance information including qualification withdrawals, new qualifications, and qualification amendments.
  • Read the latest information about our assessment paper release for past papers, and publication of assessment materials. Please see information further down this page.
  • We're delighted to announce that a number of our new Level 2 qualifications have been approved for funding from 1 August 2025. Find out more.
 Exams officers’ update

View this month's update. 

Functional Skills
  • Our online assessment supplier, Surpass, provides a test centre network allowing learners to sit on-screen Functional Skills assessments in fully invigilated and assessment-ready testing centre facilities. Complete this form to register your centre’s interest.
  • Sign up for our October maths and English CPD events, including sessions to support learners for whom English is an additional language.
T Levels
V Certs
  • Read our reminders on how to download the non-exam assessment (NEA) brief and standardisation packs, and the purpose of these documents.
Supporting your delivery
  • Sign up now for our Assessor and Internal Quality Assurance training events to meet virtually with other professionals and expand your knowledge and understanding.
  • If any contact details have changed at your centre such as programme contact, head of centre, finance or exams contact, it’s important to let us know. It’s quick and easy to notify us by filling in this form: Change of centre contact details form, and this will allow us to continue communicating important updates to the correct individuals.
  • Our Professional Development Week will be making a return for its third instalment from 16-20 December! Keep your eyes peeled for more updates on the topics that will be covered and how they can enhance your CPD.
Q6 building
SERVICE MESSAGE ARCHIVE

Explore a record of our historic updates about our products, qualifications, processes and more.

Learn more

Horizons archive

Explore our Horizons portfolio update from 2024 and beyond below to learn more about our current offer.

Horizons archive 2023
Horizons archive 2022
Horizons archive 2021
Horizons archive 2020
Assessment paper release

Prior to any NCFE external assessment, we place strict controls on our assessment papers, before and after they’re shared with you to ensure that security and integrity are always maintained. However, once learners have completed an external assessment, the risk of exposure or compromise is reduced, and we can make papers available for review. This can take two forms:

  • allowing access to unused assessment papers within a centre following an assessment
  • publishing assessment materials on our website.

From the 2024-25 session, we’ll publish past papers and their mark schemes on our website. They’ll be hosted on the relevant qualification page, clearly identified as being a past paper, and with the relevant assessment series or window stated. If an assessment required additional material, such as case studies or proformas, these will also be published.

Documents uploaded will be visible on the website, but , so you’ll need to log in via the qualification page using your Portal login details to gain access. This is to ensure that you can be confident that they’ve not also been accessed by learners.

On-demand assessments  

On-demand assessments are live for an extended period, and learners can complete it at a date and time that suits them. They can’t be shared online until after the paper has been officially retired and removed from live circulation.

Once a paper is retired, it’ll be published on our website no earlier than four weeks following the confirmation that the paper is retired and will not be reintroduced. In the meantime, valid sample papers will remain available on our website, if you want to take a look at the assessment content, structure, and format.

Timetabled assessments are completed on a specific date, or between set dates, as stated by NCFE. All learners with a booking must complete the same assessment paper, and we create a unique assessment paper for each assessment series.

Published on website:

  • assessment papers: no earlier than 48 hours following the completion of the assessment/window closure
  • mark schemes and Chief Examiner reports: on the day of results release.

*Except in cases where a live assessment variation, approved for the centre, remains in place beyond 48 hours after the closure of the assessment, in which case access should be restricted within the centre until the assessment variation has concluded.