Regulating post-16 VTQs at L2 and L3

Setting and maintaining standards

Setting and maintaining grading standards is a critical responsibility for an awarding organisation to ensure that grades are trustworthy and reliable over time so that students' achievement is properly represented. The approach to setting standards is impacted by the qualification and assessment design, which in turn should be influenced by the need to maintain standards.

These qualifications will include common design characteristics, which means that given the intention for greater comparability between awarding organisations, it is appropriate for Ofqual to specify approaches to the setting and maintenance of standards. Where we specify such approaches, we often do this by putting in place requirements about the sources of evidence awarding organisations should use to inform standard setting and ongoing maintenance of standards. This may include qualitative evidence, such as work produced by students or views of employers on the expected standard of performance, and quantitative evidence, such as data showing how well an assessment has functioned, or a breakdown of the proportion of students achieving each grade.

Proposal

For V Levels we propose to put in place requirements covering the way in which standards should be set and maintained, including how grade boundaries for key grades are set. We propose that in setting and maintaining standards for V Levels, awarding organisations should have regard to a range of evidence. The evidence should enable awarding organisations to reflect the level of demand of the specific assessment, be based on consideration of an appropriately representative sample of student work and the standards set in previous years. It should include both qualitative and quantitative evidence, which may include:

• views of senior examiners about the quality of student work
• judgements and data about the difficulty of particular assessments and/or individual questions
• information about the mean mark and the spread of marks for the qualification overall and for individual assessments
• the level of attainment demonstrated by students taking that qualification in assessments or qualifications which they have taken previously
• student work taken from similar level 3 qualifications

We propose that the A/B grade boundary is designated as a ‘key’ grade boundary and also that E/N would also be a key grade. This means that the B, C and D grades would be set arithmetically, by dividing the mark gap between A and E. Grades A* and the grade below E (N) would be set using appropriate statistical and technical evidence.

We propose to set out expectations relating to the use of evidence through our regulatory framework, and to provide guidance to help awarding organisations understand the types of evidence expected and how they should be used.

We also propose to specify requirements each year that awarding organisations must follow, relating to the way in which evidence is used for setting and maintaining standards. This is a similar approach to that used in GCSEs, AS and A Levels and will help support the intention for there to be a high degree of comparability between awarding organisations, as well as supporting the maintenance of standards over time. These annual requirements may include, for example:

• the analysis and use of data from other relevant qualifications to provide statistical evidence to support the awarding process. This may include data relating to qualifications taken previously by students or other level 3 qualifications, as well as V Levels. This data may relate directly to students taking qualifications in the series to be awarded, previous series, or historical data from the same or other qualifications.
• secure sharing of data with other awarding organisations offering V Levels to enable research into and the development of shared statistical indicators to support awarding
• collaborative work with other awarding organisations to support the development of a shared understanding of the features of student performance. This may include secure sharing of student scripts or exemplar material.

We are considering whether any further guidance, including in relation to the weight to be given to different sources of evidence in the first awards, may be necessary to ensure comparable standards are set and maintained by awarding organisations and would welcome views on this.

To support approaches to setting initial standards, we propose that awarding organisations should not be permitted to award qualifications in the first year they are made available. This will ensure that the first awards, which will inform the initial standard that awarding organisations will subsequently need to maintain, will be based on a representative sample of student work from across the 2-year course.

Our proposed Condition VL7 and associated requirements and guidance are set out in Annex A.