Quality assurance process for summer 2021

JCQ has published a stage 3 quality assurance update to help explain the sampling of evidence process. We've outlined the sampling process for our qualifications below.

Once the teacher assessed grades are received, every centre in England will be asked to provide samples of student work. Awarding bodies will ask for at least the following evidence:

• 1 A Level subject (at least 5 students),
• 2 GCSE subjects, one of which is likely to be either English Language or maths (at least 5 students for each).

If your school or college offers only A Levels or GCSEs, you'll be asked to submit work for those qualifications only.

The awarding body supporting you for stages 1 and 2 of the quality assurance process may not be the awarding body that requests your samples. In most cases you will receive a sample request from one awarding body but this may not always be possible. We'll only send sample requests for OCR qualifications.

We'll provide more details about how to submit your samples before we send you the sample request. Once you've received your request, you will have 48 hours to send your sample to us.

We’ll tell you by 25 June if you’ve been selected for the quality assurance checks and will ask you to submit evidence and records for five students for specified subjects and qualifications.

The evidence required will include: 

• candidate work
• a record of grading decisions for these candidates
• a record of why outcomes might be different from historic outcome at cohort level (where applicable).

For further quality assurance guidance, see below:

• Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals sampling guidance
• Entry Level grading and sampling guidance
• Core Maths and FSMQ sampling guidance

Our guidance also includes specific details for schools and colleges in Northern Ireland.

You need the Centre Administrator role in Interchange to be able to access the quality assurance portal.

Log in to Interchange and hover over and then click on ‘Quality assurance samples’ in the left-hand menu. If you cannot view this menu item, please contact us at support@ocr.org.uk. 

Information on how to use the portal can be found on our website.