Life and Living Skills: Centre guidance on adaptations for 2020/21

Overview

In line with the Government’s advice that teaching and assessment should continue this year, we have prepared this guidance to support centres during 2020/21 in the delivery and assessment of our Life and Living Skills qualifications.

Recognising that the disruption caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic means some learners taking vocational qualifications have already experienced lost teaching and learning time, Ofqual has enabled Awarding Organisations to put in place adaptations to qualifications in 2020/21 to mitigate the impact of this disruption and respond to any ongoing or future public health measures so that learners are able to complete their qualification and progress to further study or work.

This centre guidance is to support you and your learners to complete assessment, while following public health guidance.

Links to the operational guidance are:

• FE operational guidance (England)
• Schools operational guidance (England)
• Operational guidance for schools and settings (Wales)
• Information and guidance for educational settings (Northern Ireland)

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.

Discussions to explore ‘what if’ scenarios with learners and witness testimonies these must be fair and evidence-based to reflect what the learner has achieved.  When leading conversations, writing testimonies or reviewing evidence you should continue to be aware of the potential effects of learners’ 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 for 2020/21

The rationale for the types of adaptations is to mitigate the impact of disruption already caused to teaching and learning and to respond to any ongoing or future public health measures so that learners are able to complete their qualification and progress.  Disruption may prevent learners from completing the qualification in the normal way. 

These adaptations are for anybody taking qualifications from the Life and Living Skills suite, whether they are starting to work towards the qualification this year or continuing on programme and intending to finish this year or later.  The adaptations are in place only for the academic year 2020/21.  We encourage you to complete the assessment and submission process at the earliest opportunity.

Normally, this qualification is assessed through the observation of practical activities, which is conducted through direct (face-to-face) observation.  Centres use sufficient levels of supervision to authenticate the work of the student.  Practical activities can be carried out in a real work/life setting or a simulated activity can be used.  Some units require activities to be demonstrated more than once, what centres sometimes refer to as plural examples of outputs, to demonstrate that the candidate can consistently perform at the required standard. 

Learners who have been unable to complete their assessment due to the disruption caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic are permitted to:

• have an adjustment to the assessment requirements for outputs/activities to be demonstrated more than once, so that an activity can demonstrated only once. The learner must meet all other aspects of the assessment criteria.
• If a candidate has not yet put a skill into practice but has enough of the associated knowledge and understanding to know what to do if presented with a work/life task, a ‘what if’ discussion might provide evidence. A discussion using ‘what if questions’ that is about what they would do if performing the task would have to draw out what a candidate might encounter, how they would overcome any challenges and how they would know that they had successfully met the standard of work required. The candidate needs to be able to explain what they would do and why to carry out the task.

Adjusting OCR assessment requirements

Some OCR units require activities to be demonstrated more than once. While arrangements for taking adapted assessment are in place for 2020/21, the precise numbers of examples of evidence must be sufficient to meet the assessment criteria and the precise number requested in OCR units should be used as a guide as to what must be accomplished.

When using professional judgement on the quantity of evidence where quantity is stated in the OCR unit, the centre assessor must focus on the purpose of the qualification.  It is important centre assessors are confident that the candidate has demonstrated competency.

To illustrate:

• In Unit D16, Basic food preparation, the OCR Assessment Criteria 1.1 requires the learner to ‘Select the correct ingredients for basic dishes’. If a learner has been carrying out activities in a cooking environment, then they may not be required to prepare more than one dish but the learner must meet the remaining assessment criteria for the unit, i.e.:
  • 1.2 Choose the correct equipment and handle safely and hygienically
  • 1.3 Prepare food items for cold presentation or cooking safely and hygienically
  • 1.4 Set aside or store prepared food items ready for use according to instructions
  • 1.5 Clean work areas and equipment safely and hygienically during and after preparing food.

The centre assessor should use their judgement to determine if the candidate has performed the tasks consistently at the required standard. 

• ‘What if’ questions might help to support that judgement. Assessors can refer back to an event or activity from the past (as long as the event took place during the Learner’s registration period) when the candidate was preparing food but was not being directly observed for assessment. Question and answer questions must not permit the use of leading questions.

General guidance on producing evidence

Centres should use units that are manageable for the exceptional situations arising from the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.  Consider using an alternative unit if the teaching and assessment of a particular unit will create an unreasonable burden to the teacher or the learner while following public health guidelines.

If you need to use a simulated activity it should be as realistic as possible and ideally make use of situations already set up in the centre (e.g. paying for items in the centre canteen).  The arrangements for simulation must be set up by centre assessors, not the learner or their parents or carers. 

If using simulation will place any burden on the teacher, centre staff or cause issues for the student, then it should not be used. The assessment should be rescheduled for a later time in the academic year when it can be completed.  

With all forms of evidence, you must be assured that the candidate’s work is their own.

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. 

These adaptations are in place for 2020/21.  We encourage you to complete the assessment and submission process at the earliest opportunity.

You must complete an ‘Adaptation Declaration’ that replaces the standard submission cover sheet when you submit candidate evidence and a copy of the Interchange claim. This Adaptation Declaration can be downloaded below. You will need to confirm that any adaptations to assessment are in line with the permitted adaptations for 2020/21 outlined here.

Completed assessments can be submitted to OCR in the normal way for external moderation.  Evidence can be submitted electronically, guidance for which can be found in the centre handbook.

Life and Living skills submission cover sheet (2020/21)  

FAQs

We deliver many of the environment and community units, how can the adaptations above be applied to these units?

The general principles on adaptation can still be applied to the environment and community units. for example, unit C06 (Travel in the Community) could be done through walks within the school community or travel to and from school (including when a school minibus is used).

How could adaptation be applied to personal skills units?

Similarly to the community units above, the general principles can still be applied to these units.

For example M12 (Finding your way around an unfamiliar area) -  the school environment would be familiar to most students so it would be difficult to meet 2.1 (find specified locations in an unfamiliar area, using identified indicators) in the school setting. You could use 'what if' questions centred around finding locations in a place that is unfamiliar and in identifying potential risks there to supplement what can be done on the school site.

Unit M33 (Getting to a destination safely and on time ) could be based on travelling to and from the school in a family member's car, minibus or taxi and still meet the criteria.