Digital Employability: Centre guidance for 2021/22

Overview

We have updated this guidance document following the publication of the outcomes of the Department for Education and Ofqual’s joint consultation on the arrangements for assessment and awarding of VTQs in 2021/22.

The Government’s policy position is that for all VTQs assessment should go ahead.  All content should be taught, as far as is feasible, so that students are as well-prepared as possible for progression to the next stage of their education, training or employment. Given the disruption to students’ education that will be carried over into 2021/22, to support education recovery it may be necessary and appropriate for adaptations to be made to assessments to free up time to focus on catch up and teaching the remaining qualification content. Where the assessment is unable to proceed, in their normal or adapted form, some students may be delayed in receiving a result.

The regulatory framework put in place by Ofqual through the VCRF is flexible and allows, but does not require, assessments to be adapted.

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

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 must 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 teacher assessed grades for students taking GCSEs, A levels and other performance tables qualifications.  The section ‘Being aware of unconscious effects on objectivity’ is applicable to centre assessment in general. 

Entry 1 (05807) and Entry 2 (05808) adaptations for 2021/22

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 candidates are able to complete their qualification and progress.  Disruption may prevent candidates from completing the qualification in the normal way.  The adaptations are in place only for the academic year 2021/22. (You should expect that assessment in 2022/23 will be carried out without any adaptations.)

The basis for enabling permissible adaptations to these two qualifications is due to the fact students may not be able to access their normal setting to carry out the assessment activities needed to generate the evidence required (i.e. choosing and interacting with a digital device (for example a smartphone) and answering a series of knowledge-based questions.

Students who have been unable to complete their assessment due to disruption caused by the pandemic are permitted to take assessments in an alternative setting (for example at home). 

Within this alternative setting, we would encourage teachers/assessors to complete the OCR Evidence booklet on behalf of the student which is available to download from the OCR website. This is similar to normal circumstances where the teacher/assessor would take the lead on completing this booklet. 

These evidence booklets can be shared with students by email if they or someone else cannot download them.  Teachers/assessors must be confident that the student’s work is their own. This supervision in an alternative setting will require the use of direct observation to authenticate the student interacting with their digital device in the same way students would be observed in a normal setting.

To ensure that evidence of students interacting with their digital device can be appropriately authenticated, we strongly advise the teacher/assessor uses digital technologies.  This does not need to be recorded although teachers/assessors should be using secure video meeting applications.  The student will require two devices – one to participate in the video meeting and another device to interact with for the purpose of the assessment.

The teacher/assessor can ask the student the knowledge-based questions listed in the evidence booklet in a separate session.  This session can be conducted using audio-only technologies. 

We are aware that in many cases evidence booklets are partially completed with potentially only a few tasks within the booklet outstanding.  As a teacher/assessor you will need to make use of the two approaches above to cover each assessment task, and further need to determine how many remote sessions are required to ensure that all evidence requirements within the booklet have been met.  There is no time limit for the completion of the interactions that need to take place.

There may be occasion where the teacher/assessor may also recount where the student did demonstrate a required skill but did not record it at the time.  These instances can be documented on a witness statement and submitted as evidence although it is clear in the Centre Handbook that a witness statement cannot be used to evidence achievement of the whole qualification.  We would also remind you of the importance of objectivity and avoiding unconscious bias when using this approach (see equalities and objectivity section).

If for any reason you cannot adapt the assessments in the ways that have been described above and ensure the necessary level of supervision and checks to authenticate the evidence that is being produced, then the assessments will have to be delayed rescheduled for a time when it is possible to continue with them.

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’ that replaces the standard submission cover sheet when you submit candidate evidence and a copy of the Interchange claim. This Adaption Declaration is located below. You will need to confirm that any adaptations to an assessment are in line with the permitted adaptations for 2021/22 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.

Digital Employability (Entry 1 and Entry 2) submission cover sheet (2021/22)

 Entry 3 (05809) and Level 1 (05810) assessments to be taken as normal where possbile

The assessments for these two qualifications are to take place as normal.  Normally assessment takes place through an on-demand onscreen test and a series of confidential set assignments that are accessed via OCR Interchange.

For both the onscreen test and set assignments a form of adaptation to allow assessment to take place remotely is not possible due to the nature of the assessments and that they must be completed under direct supervision.  We encourage centres to make full use of the on demand assessment arrangements for both the test and the set assignments and the range of methods for producing evidence for the set assignments to enable candidates to complete their assessments this year.