The Centre Guides can help you with all the Quality Assurance processes.

We have templates, forms and guides to help you save time and fulfil your part in the BTEC assessment and verification process with ease.

You’re welcome to use your own forms and templates, but it may be worth referring to ours to ensure you’ve got the essentials covered.

The Special Consideration Service is a new online tool to submit and track special consideration requests for BTEC First and National qualifications. This service opened in early January, which means your Exams Officer will no longer complete any paper JCQ Form 10 applications.

Your Exams Officer will be able to track the receipt and processing of special consideration applications for BTEC Firsts and Nationals. All special consideration requests for general and vocational qualifications in summer 2024 will be processed through the Special Consideration Service.

On 28 March, JCQ released a document which provides teachers and assessors with the information they need to manage use of AI in assessments. This guidance applies to all our qualifications including vocational qualifications.

Important points to note:

• centres should explain the importance of students submitting their own independent work
• centres should ensure that teachers and assessors are familiar with AI tools and their risks
• centres should consider communications with parents/carers to make them aware of AI
• students must acknowledge use of AI when used
• misuse of AI tools is malpractice.

Within the document, there is a list of potential indicators of AI use that may help identify work where students have misused AI.

Please do take a look at this guidance.

A summary of what’s changed:

• real-life candidate malpractice examples involving AI that has not been referenced appropriately (see new appendix A)
•  new information on how to authenticate private candidate work
•  a new section, AI use and marking, to give clearer guidance on the impact on marking of student use of AI tools and on the use of AI tools by assessors when marking, with real-life examples (see new appendix B)
• an expanded list of AI tools and AI detection tools.

There is an updated version of the Assessment Record template for BTEC Entry – Level 3, these can be accessed on the BTEC forms and guides webpage.

This template now includes an updated authenticity declaration to include acknowledgement of any use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. This form is provided for immediate use.

If you design and use your own Assessment Record, please ensure this is updated to replicate the authenticity statement in our template/s.

What to teach?

Here the answer is simple. Please teach all of the specification content.

What to assess?

The BTEC Centre Guide to Internal Assessment states:

Do Assignment Briefs need to cover all unit/component content?

No. Your assignment brief needs to cover just what is being assessed so no need to include the entire unit content.

All unit/component content needs to be taught, where relevant, to provide learners with the breadth and depth to their studies. There is no formula for how much content needs to be assessed.

The amount of content the learner will need to refer to will depend on the specific requirements of the actual assignment and the requirements of the assessment criteria and associated assessment guidance which can sometimes prescribe which areas of the unit/component content needs to be assessed.

Section 6 of the BTEC National specifications includes the following:

As assignments provide a final assessment, they will draw on the specified range of teaching content for the learning aims. The specified content is compulsory. The evidence for assessment need not cover every aspect of the teaching content as learners will normally be given particular examples, case studies or contexts in their assignments. For example, if a learner is carrying out one practical performance, or an investigation of one organisation, then they will address all the relevant range of content that applies in that instance.
 

All learner work required for digital submission for both general and vocational qualifications will be uploaded via the Learner Work Transfer platform (accessed via Edexcel Online). This will include samples for non examined assessment moderation, BTEC moderated components and standards verification, plus BTEC external assessments.

For further information on submitting learner work digitally, please see our range of support articles.

Original learner evidence should be kept current, safe and secure for up to 12 weeks after learners have been certificated.

Following learner certification, assessment records (feedback sheets) and the associated internal verification documentation need to be kept for a minimum of three years.

This is taken from the BTEC Centre Guide to Internal Assessment which has a detailed section on retention of learner work and assessment records.  

Authorised Assignment Briefs are available for all units.

You may use Authorised Assignment Briefs 'off the shelf' but they still need to be internally verified.

You may wish to use these as a model for your own assignment briefs and you can have these checked by our Assignment Checking Service.

We now have new schemes of learning to fill in the gaps in the schemes of work so that every unit is now covered.

Schemes of work: units 1-7, 11-12, 14, 17-18

Schemes of learning: units 8-10, 13, 15-16, 19-20

Standardisation materials from Units 1 and 2 have now been uploaded to the qualification page.

The grade statistics for BTEC qualifications are published in late October/early November on the grade statistics page of the website.

These statistics can be used for benchmarking purposes. Please note that in line with all qualifications, learner achievement is reported at qualification level and not at unit level.

We have authorised assignment briefs for all units.

Standardisation materials from Unit 1 have now been uploaded to the qualification page.