ITQ: Centre guidance on adaptations for Summer 2020

Overview

We have prepared this guidance to support centres in the delivery and assessment of our ITQ qualifications. 

For qualifications that support progression into or through employment, Ofqual has agreed that for students who expected to complete assessments between 20 March and 31 July 2020, but have had this disrupted, assessment should be adapted where possible to support their progression.

Equalities and Objectivity

It is important that any adaptations to assessment consider the ability of students to access them and, as far as possible, ensure that any adaptations do not advantage or disadvantage any student.

For students with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), centres will be best placed to accommodate this when making adapted assessments available for their students. Reasonable adjustments and access arrangements must be made available and recognised wherever possible.

If you require any guidance or support about making reasonable adjustments for your students, please contact the OCR Special Requirements Team on srteam@ocr.org.uk.

Professional discussions and witness testimonies need to be fair and evidence-based to reflect what the candidate has achieved.  When leading conversations, writing testimonies or reviewing evidence you should continue to be aware of the potential effects of students’ characteristics (including protected characteristics) on assessment judgements and ensure that they are not affecting your judgements. Protected characteristics are legally defined and include a learner’s sex, race, religion/belief, disability, gender reassignment or sexual orientation.

Guidance on the importance of objectivity and avoiding unconscious bias can be taken from the section in Ofqual’s publication for schools and colleges who are providing centre assessment grades for students taking GCSEs, A levels and other performance tables qualifications.  The section ‘Unconscious effects on objectivity’ is applicable to centre assessment in general. 

Permitted adaptations

There is no set date by which assessments using adaptations must be completed but we encourage you to complete adapted assessments at the earliest opportunity.

The rationale for the types of adaptations for these qualifications is that the candidate may not be able to access their normal setting to carry out the activities needed to generate evidence of their skills, knowledge and understanding.  A normal setting could be the workplace, college, education department or school.

Students who have been unable to complete their assessment due to the current extraordinary circumstances brought about by the Coronavirus are permitted to:

• take assessments (including the OCR assignments) in an alternative setting, including at home (noting the exceptions below)
• use alternative methods to demonstrate how to print and/or reproduce documents if they cannot access a printer/scanner/copier
• provide verbal responses to questions from the Evidence Review Form to the teacher (the teacher records the responses).

If for any reason you cannot adapt the assessments in the ways that have been described below whilst ensuring the required level of supervision and checks to authenticate the evidence that is being produced,  the assessments will have to be delayed until it is safe to continue with them as normal. 

Taking assessments in an alternative setting

The Centre Handbook indicates that centres must provide students with suitable IT equipment with the appropriate software to generate evidence.  In an alternative setting the teacher/assessor may need to engage the student in meaningful dialogue to ensure they have the necessary tools (both device and software applications) to generate the evidence, potentially selecting different units to match the resources that are available.

All of the assessments in ITQ require students to use different software applications in a variety of different ways.  As an assessor/teacher who authenticated evidence as it was produced in a normal setting, you will need to consider how your approach will need to adapt/flex when the evidence is being generated in an alternative environment (e.g., at  home). 

Whatever approach you use, you will need to exercise sufficient supervision or introduce sufficient checks to be in a position to judge the authenticity of the work that is being produced. This could include the increased use of secure video meeting applications and/or audio technologies to monitor students’ progress in their assessments as well as the use of questioning techniques to reassure yourself that the evidence being produced is the student’s own.  Examples of questions you could ask include: 

• In your own words, summarise what you did to complete the task.
• Describe how you created a table and, if you needed to make the table larger, how did you add more rows/columns?
• How long approximately did it take you to complete the task? 

These are just some of the examples of questions that could help you to authenticate the evidence being produced by your students. OCR will not expect this individual student audit to be submitted for external moderation but it is important these records are retained in the centre.

Permitted adaptations  to OCR assignments

There are no changes to arrangements surrounding the use of either OCR set or centre devised practical activities/assignments to generate evidence for ITQ units.  The OCR set assignments will remain on the OCR website and can be shared with students by email if they or someone else cannot download them.

Adaptations are required when it comes to the use of CLAiT and CLAiT Plus assignments.  Under normal circumstances, these assignments would be taken under controlled conditions. 

For this period of time, we are relaxing the confidentiality requirements surrounding the use of Level 1 CLAiT 2005-2006 Set A and B Live Assignments and datafiles and Level 2 CLAiT Plus 2005-2006 Set A and B Live Assignments and datafiles. Although you will still need to access these assignments via OCR Interchange, you are now permitted to share these assignment with students via email or alternative means:

• Level 1 CLAiT 2005-2006 Set A
• Level 1 CLAiT 2005-2006 Set B
• Level 2 CLAiT Plus 2005-2006 Set A
• Level 2 CLAiT Plus 2005-2006 Set B

After the 31^st of July 2020, at a time to be determined, these assignments will be removed from OCR Interchange and they will not be available to be used for future assessments.  We will let you know when they are to be removed. 

It is important to remember that these assignments were originally designed to be taken under controlled conditions. Therefore, you need to follow the advice that is provided in the previous section of this guidance when it comes to validating and authenticating the work that is being produced.

All of the assessment criteria still have to be met and you still need to mark them with the same level of rigour as specified in the marking criteria sections of the Assessment Marking Handbook.

If a student does not pass the CLAiT assignment they cannot retake the same assignment.  Centres can either design their own task or the candidate must wait until it is safe to take a CLAiT assignment under the normal supervised conditions. 

Where adaptations are not permitted to assignments

Adaptations are not possible when it comes to the use of assessments available on OCR Interchange for units 33, 39, 45 and 91 (previously webwise). These assessments must be taken under controlled conditions and take the form of a multiple-choice test and associated practical activities.

Due to the nature of these assessments a form of adaptation is not possible. As a viable alternative, students can use real work or centre devised assignments to generate the required evidence. Two of these units (33 and 39) can be evidenced using CLAiT Unit 8 as an alternative (using 2005-2006 Set A and B) at home.

Adjustments to assessment requirements for printing/reproducing hard copy

Assessment requirements in units/OCR assignments that require the candidate to print and/or to produce hard copy documents can be adapted.  While arrangements for taking adapted assessment remain in place during this exceptional time, students can use alternative forms of evidence to demonstrate competence. Alternative forms include: 

• Cross-referencing to previous achievement in other units.
• Printing to pdf.
• Submitting a screenshot of the print preview screen.
• Professional discussion and witness testimony.

The centre assessor must be confident that the student has demonstrated competency

Evidence review forms 

Evidence review forms are provided to generate evidence of parts of the mandatory unit at Levels 1 and 2.

Under normal circumstances evidence review forms require students to complete the information in the form independently with teachers/assessors marking the student output. If it is not possible for a student to complete the form from home, or if the teacher will not be able to confirm the work is the student’s own work if it is produced from home, we will permit teachers to hold a conversation with a student and capture the individual and authentic responses of the student. This format is similar to a professional discussion.

The teacher must record the responses the student gives and validate the assessment criteria that are being met. If the student does not meet all of the criteria during the first conversation,  the student will need more teaching and learning time before the teacher holds another conversation with the student. The evidence must be submitted in the normal manner.

Evidence Checklists

If you are not using an OCR set assignment, you must use the evidence checklist. The assessment criteria for each unit must still be covered but the evidence requirements can be met in different ways to those listed on the evidence checklists.

Alternative forms of evidence include witness testimonies, professional discussion, tutor observations or audio/video evidence of a real or simulated work activity.

The Centre Handbook provides useful information on these forms of evidence including advice on their use. Most importantly,  witness testimonies and professional discussion cannot be used to evidence achievement of the whole qualification.

Quality assurance

It is important for all internal assessments that robust monitoring processes are implemented by your centre. These monitoring processes should include effective dialogue with students where needed to ensure the evidence being generated is both individual and authentic.

There are no changes to the sampling rules for these internal assessments. We require you to submit the same amount of work for external moderation as you would under normal circumstances. 

You must complete an ‘Adaption Declaration’ included within a summer 2020 cover sheet, that replaces the standard submission cover sheet when you submit candidate evidence and a copy of the Interchange claim. This summer 2020 cover sheet can be downloaded below. You will need to confirm that any adaptations to assessment are in line with the permitted adaptations for Summer 2020 outlined by OCR.

Completed assessments can be submitted to OCR in the normal way for external moderation.  We would strongly advise the use of electronic evidence during this period, guidance for which can be found in the Centre Handbook.

ITQ submission cover sheet (2020)  

FAQs

If we are able to deliver ITQ as usual within our centre, with no adaptations, can we submit work to the moderator as usual?

Yes, you can submit as usual with the exception of the submission cover sheet. Please use the summer 2020 version and indicate that assessment has been conducted with no adaptations.

If you are using CLAiT, we would advise using sets other than 2005/6 A and B in case you need to offer a remote assessment for the candidate at a later date.

Assessment was conducted within our centre before lockdown but we didn't collect authentication signatures before we closed, what can we do?

You can submit as normal, indicate on the summer 2020 cover sheet that assessment has been conducted with no adaptations but you must ask the candidate to declare the work is their own (this can be an email from the candidate) and keep hold of the declaration  - you do not need to send it to OCR.

Our candidates have already attempted CLAiT 2005/6 Set A & B in our centre before lockdown, can we give them another set to complete remotely (at home)?

No, only 2005/6 Set A and B can be completed without direct supervision. You may, as an exception, allow the candidate to attempt the first set (2005/6 A or B) that they attempted, again.

If candidates attempt both CLAiT 2005/6 Set A & B at home but do not pass, can we give them another set to complete remotely?

No, only 2005/6 Set A and B can be completed without direct supervision. Centres can either design their own task or the candidate must wait until it is safe to take a different CLAiT assignment under the normal supervised conditions.

Our only adaptation was the completion of the CLAiT assignment remotely, what do we put on the cover sheet?

Indicate on the summer 2020 cover sheet that assessment has been conducted with adaptations, as these assessments must normally be conducted in a controlled setting, this is an adaptation.