Awarding marks to performances under the minimum time requirement - FAQs

The reason that Drama was not included in the Ofqual consultation was because Music and Dance had the zero mark condition as part of their subject content; however Drama did not have any such condition in the subject content. 

Yes, the minimum performance times still stand (please see below for reminders of these timings). They are a requirement of our qualifications and students should be encouraged to do all they can to ensure these are met in their performances. 

For all Drama qualifications we were given minimum time requirements by Ofqual in the Subject Level Conditions and Requirement and these still apply to our qualifications. 

During the accreditation process we were obliged, by Ofqual, to put in place a mechanism to deal with such under time performances (and also for performances that exceeded maximim time requirements). 

At this time we opted to follow suit with Music and award zero marks. We did this for parity of approaches aross these qualifications and to be fair to all students across the different subjects.

No. We will not be retrospectively making changes to the 2018 assessments. This is in line with direction from Ofqual with regards to the Music and Dance change.

There are circumstances, despite the very best preparation, where some students (and we must stress that we see a low number of these instances) fall under the minimum time requirements. This may be, for example down to them feeling nervous on the day of their performance, so they rush through the work or they miss out part of the text.

For whatever reason the time requirement is not met, we still must have a plan in place for how to assess these students.