November 2025 BTEC update for Business, Applied Law, Enterprise and Marketing
Mon Nov 03 10:30:00 UTC 2025
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Welcome to this November 2025 update with all the latest news on our BTEC Business, Enterprise, Marketing and Applied Law qualifications.
This month's newsletter leads on the recent Government announcement surrounding the future of vocational education in the UK. We urge all UK centres to engage with the white paper proposal during the consultation phase in order to share your views and thoughts.
NEW! Centre Support Requests
At Pearson, due to strict GDPR rules we are unable to share centre details with other centres without permission. However, if any centres out there are looking to collaborate or share delivery or resource ideas and would like me to publish your contact details in the monthly newsletter, please do get in touch on teachingbusiness@pearson.com.
In this update you will find information on:
| 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
|
| 15 November | High late fee will apply for all December/January entries from this date |
| 17 November | Digital Learner Work Transfer (LWT) available for uploading work of sampled learners for internal assessments for the Tech Award |
| 15 December | Tech Award deadline for mark submission and upload of work of sampled learners for internal assessments |
On 20 October, the government published its Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper, setting out significant reforms to vocational education in England. We know you'll have questions about what this means for you and your students, and we want to provide you with clear information and reassurance.
What it means for you
You should continue to register students and deliver your programmes as planned in 2025/26. There are no immediate changes to your current provision, and BTECs continue to provide excellent outcomes for the thousands of students who choose vocational pathways each year.
As soon as we have full details about the funding arrangements for 2026/27, we’ll share them with you straight away, so you can plan with confidence.
What does the White Paper propose?
The government has announced plans to introduce "V Levels" as a new vocational qualification pathway at level 3, sitting alongside A levels and T Levels. These qualifications aim to simplify the current vocational landscape and will be designed to be similar in size to A levels, allowing students to combine vocational and academic study more flexibly.
The government has opened the consultation to test the key design principles of V Levels, and new qualifications at level 2 that sit alongside GCSEs.
It invites views on size and subject areas, information advice and guidance, new T Levels, level 2 qualifications and pathways, non qualification activities, the transition plan, the co-design approach to setting content, and qualification branding.
The deadline for responses in 12 January 2026.
From the January 2026 series, we’ll be asking you to submit a slightly larger sample size for moderation in Project qualifications and BTEC Tech Awards.
From June 2026, this approach will also apply to GCSE, International GCSE, A level and Entry Level Certificate qualifications. This change is designed to make moderation smoother and reduce the need for additional sample requests later in the year.
We are looking for Consultant Development Managers to work on all subjects across the cycle 2 and 3 AAQ/TOEQ qualifications and our T levels content and assessments that motivate our learners and ensure accurate graded achievement.
If you would like to be involved in shaping and developing our qualification content and assessment apply now.
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!
As part of an ongoing project within Pearson, we are seeking to understand the technology infrastructure and assessment practices for BTECs, FSQs, and other Vocational and Technical Qualifications.
Understanding centre technology infrastructure, the use of Learning Management Systems and how you store learner work is pivotal to a number of different projects that are happening across the business.
Your help in sharing your experiences will be greatly appreciated.
Deadline for completion is 7 October.
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
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.
Last month we held two training session on assessment of both Component 1 and 2. These recordings will shortly be avaialble to watch online via the website; under Past Training Content.
The PSAs released on 1 September are for the May/June 2026 assessment series.
The deadlines for submission of learner work will remain unchanged at 15 May.
If you are intending to submit work for the 15 December deadline, you must use the PSA titles which were released in June.
| PSA release date | PSA submission deadline |
|---|---|
| 2 June | 15 December |
| 1 September | 15 May |
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
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
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
| 03 November 2025 at 08:00 - 14:00 GMT | Grading Standardisation Workshop for BTEC International Level 2 & 3 Business |
| 13 November 2025 at 08:00 - 14:00 GMT | Holistic Assessment Planning and Assignment writing for BTEC International Level 3 in Business |
| 18 November 2025 at 07:00 - 09:30 GMT | An Introduction to the Principles of Quality Assurance BTEC International Level 2 and Level 3 Qualifications - 23/24 |
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)
