Overview

Please find the link to access the consultation questions below.

The Department for Education (DfE) is changing its policy for how students can take the Core Exams and Core Project which are part of the Technical Qualification in a T Level. Instead of having to take both together the first time they take them, from September 2023, students will be able to take each separately. This means, for example, that instead of having to take the Core Exam and Core Project in a single series, as they do currently, a student could choose to take the Core Exam in the summer series of one year, and the Core Project in the autumn of a different year. This change is to offer more flexibility for providers delivering Technical Qualifications and to students taking them.

To allow this, Ofqual needs to update its assessment requirements relating to the timing of assessments which are set out in its Qualification Level Conditions for Technical Qualifications. The proposed changes will:

• remove the requirement for students’ first attempt at the Core Exam and Core Project to be in the same assessment series
• amend the requirements specifying which assessments an awarding organisation must permit to be taken in different assessment series to one another
• as a consequence, amend the minimum required number of assessment series for the Core Assessments, to reflect that the revised policy will require 2 opportunities to take the Core Assessments in each academic year
• update the section on retakes to reflect that the position for retakes and first entries, which currently differs, will in future be the same

These changes are described in part 1.

There are also some other minor changes, not related to the revised policy for the Core Assessments, which are needed to keep the Qualification Level Conditions up to date. These are changes such as updating references to the Institute for Apprenticeships (IfA), which is now known as the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education (IfATE), and amending references to specific General Conditions which have been renumbered since the Qualification Level Conditions for Technical Qualifications were published.

These changes are described in part 2.

What happens next

Your response has been submitted - thank you for completing the consultation

This information will now be analysed and the findings will be published on our website.

To get alerted to updates to this and other Ofqual consultations, you can sign up for alerts on our consultation page on GOV.UK.