Reporting and amending vocational achievement
It's your responsibility to report your learners' achievement in internally assessed units and external assessment (where appropriate), and to report success to us for interim or final certification. You can find further guidance in the specification.
You should report your learners’ success to us via EDI or Edexcel Online:
- at the end of each year/stage of the programme – by 5 July for programmes following a normal academic year, or as soon as possible after that, even where learners are retaking assessments or tests. This is especially important for UCAS applicants – see ‘Reporting success to UCAS’ below.
- immediately after completion for non-academic year programmes
- when a learner is transferring to another programme/centre
- when a learner is withdrawing from the programme, even where no success has been achieved. This is especially important for UCAS applicants. (If the registration has already been deleted, you don’t need to report it.)
Unit grades
It is important that you report unit grades accurately according to the available assessment records for the programme and in accordance with the grading rules in the specification documents.
BTEC First, National and Higher National qualification units are always subject to grading except where otherwise indicated in the qualification specification documents. Achievement should be reported using the grades below:
U – Unclassified
P1 – Level 1 Pass (NQF BTEC Firsts only and RQF Tech Awards)
M1 – (RQF Tech Awards only)
P – Pass
M – Merit
D – Distinction.
Please refer to the specifications for each programme for full details. Centres must ensure that they report grades correctly according to the status of the unit.
Overall qualification grades of achievement
The overall grade is calculated automatically from the unit grades reported (except Level 3 and Level 4 Foundation Diplomas in Art and Design where you will need to report the overall grade through Edexcel Online or EDI/A2C). For all other qualifications the centre does not need to supply further information.
Full details on the overall grades available and how they are determined are given in the specification document for each programme.
For programmes following the academic year, we’ll issue awards by 15 August if we’ve received your results by 5 July, unless there is a query over the result or your centre are deferred.
Certificate deferrals occur where we haven’t received a standards verifier or external examiner report, or where a centre or learners at the centre have been blocked for certification.
Certificates and results for success reported after 5 July may be issued after 15 August.
Each year we work with UCAS to identify BTEC Level 3-5 learners who’ve applied for entry to higher education courses.
Throughout July and August, we send UCAS confirmation of achievements for 'matched' learners so that Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) have the latest information on each applicant.
Where we can't match learners (e.g. because of incorrect spellings or centre details) we can still inform UCAS of these learners’ achievements if you email your Account Specialist the learner’s UCAS Personal ID number and UCAS Scheme Code.
Please report results to us by 5 July so that we can inform UCAS in time. If we receive your results after 5 July but before 31 July, we’ll make every effort to confirm the results to UCAS.
If you’re reporting results by EDIFACT EDI, please send a file earlier in July for your UCAS learners only, rather than including these learners in a larger file later in July.
How to report achievement to us
There are two ways you can report success. Click on the tabs below to find out more about each:
Edexcel Online is a web-based service designed to make the administration of learner information easier, faster and more accessible.
The guides below show you how to report your learner's grades.
| How-to guides | |
|---|---|
| How to use the bulk grade upload facility | How to make bulk claims for interim and full certification on Edexcel Online: |
Once you've entered the claims, please give your learners a copy of the Edexcel Online confirmation report so that they have early evidence of their success.
| Claim type | When to make this type of claim | |
|---|---|---|
| Full Award | You should only claim a full award where a learner has completed all the required units and is eligible for the full qualification. For nationally accredited programmes, you can order a programme definition to check eligibility requirements.
Where a learner has not met the eligibility requirements for a full award claim, we’ll notify you by sending you a 'form query' (see 'form queries' below). |
|
| Interim | Where a learner has not completed all of the requirements for the qualification, you should claim an ‘Interim’ certificate. When you make an interim claim, a Notification of Performance/Certificate of Unit Credit will be issued for learners on full programmes, and the registration will remain open. | |
| Fallback | Fallback claims are for learners who don’t intend to complete the programme. When you make a fallback claim, we’ll issue a Certificate of Achievement or fallback Certificate of Unit Credit and close the learner’s registration - so you should only make this claim where you’re sure that the learner won’t be returning to continue the qualification at a later date.
The Certificate of Achievement or fallback Certificate of Unit Credit lists the units that have been successfully achieved, but does not state the title of the original programme of registration. |
|
Units for which your centre has approval, but which are outside the registered programme, may be added and will be certified on the Notification of Performance. To add these units, enter the unit code (up to five digits followed by a letter) into the ‘Add Unit’ field.
If you want the unit to count towards the overall qualification, it may be possible to request this through the 'Meeting Local Needs' (MLN) process. You may also add units to an individual unit (I type) registration. We’ll charge a fee and issue an invoice for this.
The date (MM/YY) when the programme was fully completed. This will appear on the final award document.
For advice on submitting claims where the award date was more than six months ago, please email your account specialist.
Awards can’t be post-dated. We will print the award issue date as well as the award date on the final certificate.
Tick this box if the learner has withdrawn from the programme. This will put the registration on hold, but won’t close it permanently. We’ll issue a Notification of Performance for any units reported.
If we can't process a learner's reported success because of missing or incorrect information, or if an award has been withheld due to ineligibility, we'll send you a 'form query' through Edexcel Online. An automatic email will be sent to your centre’s examinations officer to let you know that a query has been issued.
You can access open queries on Edexcel Online by selecting the ‘BTEC’ qualification and then ‘Form Queries’ from the left-hand menu. The query will specify the problem and request additional information or documentation so that we can process the claim and issue certification.
Please respond to any open queries immediately using the query reply option on Edexcel Online to avoid any delay in the issue of a final award. We'll check the progress of any queries to ensure that outstanding problems are resolved.
Upgrading and amending reported achievement
Learners’ performance on BTEC Level 2-5 programmes may be upgraded at any time while the registration is still valid, before an award has been issued. Please report your revised recommendations using Edexcel Online or EDI, quoting:
- learner registration number
- learner name
- unit code
- unit grade
- award claimed (where appropriate).
We’ll then issue an amended Notification of Performance. Resit grades may be reported at Pass, Merit or Distinction levels.
A learner who has achieved a nationally accredited qualification, and who wishes to upgrade the result, must decline the grade awarded before they can retake any units.
Learners who want to reject the grade(s) achieved on a nationally accredited qualification must make a request to decline a grade(s) through their centre.
You'll need to return all certification documentation to us, along with a covering letter explaining why the grade(s) should be declined.
We'll process all requests that we receive within five weeks of the certification issue date free of charge. If you make a request after that, we can only accept it while the learner registration and programme approval are still valid, and we'll charge a duplicate certificate fee.
You must ensure programme assessment records are kept up to date by reporting your learners’ unit grades accurately.
If you wish to amend unit grades before the certificates are issued, email your account specialist as soon as possible so we can make sure you receive the award documentation on time.
If you wish to amend unit grades after the qualification has been issued, you'll need to send us a written explanation.
Where award documentation has already been issued, you'll need to return the original qualification certificate and Notification of Performance to us, along with the SA16 (BTEC) form, which you can find below.
If we receive your request for an amended certificate more than a month after the certificates have been issued, we'll charge a duplicate certificate fee.
