December 2025 BTEC update for Business, Applied Law, Enterprise and Marketing
3 December 2025
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Welcome to the December 2025 update!
As we wind up the year, please find all the key dates for moderation requirements for the BTEC Tech Awards as well as a reminder for the BTEC National centres to keep an eye out for an email from your standards verifier in the new year.
You will also find some links to some really encouraging research carried out by Pearson regarding 'associated outcomes' of BTEC National Level 3 learners.
International centres will find some links to a recent training event, on grading, if you missed it, however there is plenty more training sessions planned for the new year.
Wishing you a wonderful festive and restful break, when it arrives!
| Date | Activity |
| BTEC key dates and term-time checkpoints | We recently published the BTEC key dates and term-time checkpoints for 2025/26. While your exams officers will take the lead on most of these activities, your support will be important to help meet these deadlines, so it’s useful to be aware of what is required and when
|
| 1 December | Cohort declaration opens: begin checking students expecting a result in summer 2026 have a summer tag in the VQ Learner Tracker. |
| 15 December | Tech Award deadline for mark submission and upload of work of sampled learners for internal assessments |
| 31 December | Deadline to delete BTEC registrations made since 1 September 2025 |
We invite our school and college customers to join us in a series of webinars where we will provide a summary of the key proposals from the Government White Paper, the Curriculum and Assessment Review report and funding guidance.
At Pearson we are committed to understanding the efficacy of our qualifications and continuously improving and updating them to support the best outcomes for students.
We regularly evaluate the effectiveness of our provision and are pleased to share the findings of two of our recent research projects looking at outcomes associated with the BTEC Level 3 Nationals, specifically
- Salary outcomes using Longitudinal Educational Outcomes (LEO)
- Higher Education (HE) continuation rate (i.e. proportion of students that successfully progress into their second year of a degree).
These two projects speak to the dual purpose of BTECs, supporting entry direct into employment and HE.
Calling all Centres who deliver BTEC Nationals (2016) in Business, IT, Health & Social Care, Applied Law and Sport & Exercise Science!
Help us design and shape a new Verification Process - get involved in the Verify Trial.
We’d love your help shaping a new Verification Process.
Please join us by participating in the Verify Trial, launching this academic year.
Whether you deliver some, or all the above programmes we want to hear from you.
The Verify Trial focuses on providing Centres with a dedicated tool designed to assist in quality assurance processes and to improve accuracy in internal assessments. By taking part, your Centre will benefit from early access to resources aimed at supporting robust and transparent quality assurance, ensuring fairness for all learners.
If your Centre is keen to drive improvement and be part of something exciting, we’d love to hear from you!
The Centre Guides are available below.
The first document is the BTEC Centre Guide to Internal Assessment (although it is just labelled 'Document Title').
The latest information page from the JCQ includes
- guidance for teachers on malpractice
- presentations for teachers and learners
- an information sheet for teachers
- a poster for learners
Learner Work Transfer is now open for you to upload your sampled students’ work by 15 December.
You don’t need to wait until the deadline; if you’ve got work ready, you can start uploading now.
Once you’ve submitted your students’ work, you can expect to receive your initial moderator feedback reports from 16 January 2026. We’ll email quality nominees and exams staff to let you know when they’re ready to download from Edexcel Online.
In preparation for next term, you may want to start sharing with your learners the enterpise themes for the June 2026 PSA's. A bit of homework for over the holidays perhaps!
With the new business plan template being rolled out this academic year, I wanted to share some FAQ regarding this to help with your delivery and assessment, from our senior moderator.
The new plan is available to download from the website.
- Can the headings be changed in the new template, or must learners use it as it is? The template has been provided, so must be used as it is. Therefore, the headings do need to stay as they are. In reference to the new research prompts on the template, these are there so learners are aware that they need to have some research somewhere and to be able to refer to it. This research could be research from Task 1a too.
- Can learners not fill in the "Cost per Unit" section in the break-even table as it is confusing? This is just a prompt to ensure they have the correct information before working out the variable cost and breakeven point.
- Can you please clarify what is required for Component 2 for the research column of the Business Plan for the Physical and Human Resources? It can either be additional research they have undertaken (for example refining research from that they have undertaken in Task 1a) and therefore this could be website links, or they can just state 'see section x/ paragraph x/page x in Task 1a. With regards to Human resources, research could be referring back to their skills audit for the selected idea for Task 1a, for example. Physical resources, would most likely be either referring back to the materials needed from Task 1a and any additional materials they need for example tables for sales/ display boxes/stick boxes etc in the form of website links etc.
- Can you please share some exemplar work for Component 2 using the new business plan template? We haven't been able to cover a completed business plan in the bitesize videos as yet as we haven't got any completed by learners at the moment (for the updated business plan). After the December/ January window we will have these to use and will add these to the bitesize videos then.
January 2026
May 2026
Want to find out what everyone else is asking...
Delivery support page
- Admin and delivery
- Free and paid-for resources
- Training videos
Assessment support page
- The three components
- Terminal assessments and resits
- Grade boundaries and statistics
As we go into the new year, each centre will be allocted a standards verifier (SV) for this academic year. By the end of February all centres should have been contacted by their allocated verifier.
In the meantime, its a good idea to ensure you are happy with your assessement plan as this will be requested early on in the process. However, remember, this is a working document so don't worry if things shift througout the year. It merely provided a guide for the SV.
If you have not heard from your SV by late February, please do get in touch with us via the support portal.
Modified papers for learner with varying needs to access past examination materials, are now available to download from our website.
Tutor2u are running four in-person CPD courses supporting the externally-assessed units in the BTEC National.
All held in London, the dates are:
- Thursday February 4th 2026 | Success in Unit 2
- Wednesday February 5th 2026 | Success in Unit 3
- Friday February 6th 2026 | Success in Unit 6
Tutor2u now offer a new, FREE, self-paced CPD course to support all teachers new to the RQF (2016) programme. The course focuses on developing attendee confidence in the planning and delivery of the BTEC National Business Programme.
Applied Law - January 2026
Applied Law - May 2026
Business - January 2026
Business - May 2026
Enterprise & Entrepreneurship - January 2026
Enterprise & Entrepreneurship - May 2026
Marketing - January 2026
Marketing - May 2026
Delivery support page
- Admin and delivery
- Free and paid-for resources
- Professional bodies partnerships
Assessment support page
- Internally assessed units
- Externally assessed units
- Examiners' reports
- Grade boundaries and statistics
Watch the training session held last month to support the marking of learner work for both Level 2 and Level 3.
UPDATE: following the recent UK government reform announcement regarding BTEC reform in the UK and the impact of this on BTEC qualifications. I would like to reassure all our international customers that this does not affect you. BTECs will continue to grow and flourish in our international markets, so please continue to plan and operate as usual!
We have a variety of pages devoted to keeping you updated with the specifications, teaching resources, sample assignment materials as well as all authorised assignment briefs and Pearson Set Assignments.
Also find access and support the Pearson Progress platform to help simplify the planning and assessment of BTEC qualifications
| 08 January 2026 at 09:00 - 11:30 GMT | Introduction to Teaching the International BTEC Level 2 in Business |
| 15 January 2026 at 09:00 - 11:30 GMT | Introduction to Teaching the International BTEC Level 3 in Business |
Find ot more about our work with strategic partners such as Liverpool Football Club and the British Esports Federation, amongst others, allowing us to maintain content relevance and global reach.
We have developed digital resources to support your delivery of our suite of BTEC International Level 3 qualifications and cover the mandatory and some of the more popular optional units.
Our Study Texts have been thoroughly developed and feature international examples, scenarios and references to make them relevant across a broad range of geographical territories and support learning and teaching delivery.
Subject advisor
Sarah Mark
BTEC Business, Enterprise, Esports and Marketing
Email :
Phone :
+44 (0) 161 528 7357
(Teaching Services team | Mon-Fri, 9am - 5pm GMT)
