Introduction of new assessments into the paper bank (Functional Skills)

What are we doing?

To ensure we meet our regulatory requirements we are required to introduce new assessment papers into our live bank on a regular basis. This helps maintain the validity and reliability of our assessments while allowing us to repurpose papers for mock assessments.

As new assessments are introduced into the paper bank, they are required to go through an awarding process with live learner data, which allows us to set a valid and reliable pass mark for those assessments.

In a period where we introduce new assessment papers, we must temporarily put a hold on our 6-day turnaround to ensure we capture as wide a range of learner attempts as possible to ensure we can determine a valid pass mark that does not disadvantage learners.

What does this mean?

This session we want to support you in the planning of your assessments by providing you with the dates we intend to introduce new assessment papers for the full academic session. This means you can identify when a new assessment paper will be introduced for the assessment format and when learners’ results will be released if they sit that assessment.

This allows you to plan your assessments while being able to factor in the timeframe between sitting an assessment and getting the results for your learners. All results of a newly awarded paper will be given a specific release date so you know when your learner will be due to get their result.

What about 6-day turnaround?

Should you not receive the learners results within 6 working days after the assessment is uploaded to our online assessment system or returned to NCFE if paper based, then you will receive the result by the below advertised date.

Any assessments sat or uploaded outside of the dates in which we plan to introduce new assessment papers will be released as normal within 6 working days.

What are the dates?

The below dates show the different dates where we will be introducing new assessment papers, please note other assessments will be available as normal outside of the specific assessment type.

Delivery mode	Assessment date to and from	Results release
On-screen	29/09/2022 - 01/11/2022	08 Nov 2022
RI	27/10/2022 - 30/11/2022	07 Dec 2022
Paper-based	28/11/2022 - 04/01/2023	11 Jan 2023
On-screen	16/01/2023 - 16/02/2023	23 Feb 2023
RI	13/02/2023 - 14/03/2023	21 Mar 2023
Paper-based	13/03/2032 - 14/04/2023	21 Apr 2023
On-screen	02/05/2023 - 02/06/2023	09 Jun 2023

 

*Information correct at time of publication - September 22