Administration (Business Professional): Centre guidance on adaptations 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 candidates are as well-prepared as possible for progression to the next stage of their education, training or employment. Given the disruption to learners’ education that will be carried over into 2021 to 2022, 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 candidates may be delayed in receiving a result.

Our Administration Business Professional qualifications are vocationally-related qualifications with a main purpose of supporting progression into and within employment.  They are sometimes used to support progression into further study. 

We are keeping in place the adaptations set out in this guidance document. This centre guidance is to support you and your candidates to complete assessment, while following any remaining public health guidance.

Equalities and Objectivity

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

For candidates with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND), centres will be best placed to accommodate this when making adapted assessments available for their candidates. 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 candidates, 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 candidates’ characteristics, including protected characteristics) on assessment judgements and ensure that they are not affecting your judgements. Protected characteristics are legally defined and include a candidate’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 provided teacher assessed grades for candidates 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.

Permitted adaptations

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. 

These adaptations are for anybody taking qualifications from the Administration (Business Professional) 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 2021/22.  You should expect that assessment in 2022/23 is to be carried out without any adaptations.  Some of the guidance below is already permitted and included as guidance in the model assignments. It has been included here to encourage using different ways of generating evidence so assessment can be completed.  Please read this guidance alongside the centre handbook, units and, if you use them, the model assignments.

Normally, an observation of a practical activity is conducted through direct (face-to-face) observation.  Centres use sufficient levels of supervision to authenticate the work of the candidate.  Practical activities can be carried out in a real work or a simulated setting.  OCR assignments are optional and can be modified to reflect the real work setting or scenario but some require a specific number of examples of work outputs to demonstrate that the candidate can consistently perform at the required standard which cannot normally be adapted.

Candidates who have been unable to complete their assessment due to disruption caused by the pandemic are permitted to:

• complete assessments (including the OCR assignments) in an alternative setting, including at home
• have an adjustment to the requirements in OCR assignments which require a specific number of examples of work outputs/activities
• use alternative methods to demonstrate how to print and/or reproduce documents if they cannot access a printer/scanner/copier.
• make use of evidence from other units where appropriate which have been completed or undertaken. The table below provides guidance on how this may be achieved.  Where evidence is cross-referenced, access to the relevant unit must be provided to the external moderator so that they can identify whether the evidence is sufficient. This applies even if the evidence has already been moderated in a previous submission.

Further guidance on using evidence from other units is available in the Appendix 1 below (Guidance on using evidence from other units).

Any adaptations in this guidance are in place for the 2021/22 academic year only.  We encourage you to complete the assessment and submission process at the earliest opportunity.

If you cannot adapt the assessments in the ways that are described below and ensure the necessary level of supervision and checks to authenticate the evidence that is produced, then the assessments will have to be rescheduled to take place at a time when it is possible to continue with them.

Taking assessments in an alternative setting

Valid and reliable evidence of competence is required for competence-based assessment criteria. Assessor observation should continue to be the primary source of evidence to determine if the requirements of the OCR units/assignments have been met, where possible. 

Measures for social/physical distancing will make completion of some units more challenging, for example:

• Unit 4, Welcoming visitors
• Unit 24, Working in an administration team
• Unit 29, Train and develop staff

Where practical activities and direct observation cannot be carried out in the normal setting and manner, suitable alternatives are:

• audio or video evidence of a real or simulated work activity taking place
• professional discussion
• witness testimony
• authenticated reflective accounts, candidate-produced reports or candidate statements
• outputs from the candidate's work or work products (with supporting documentation from a work activity).
• The use of explanations and examples for some practical activities, as outlined in appendix 1.

Adjustments to OCR assignments

Some OCR assignments ask for a specific number of items of evidence. While arrangements for taking adapted assessment are in place for 2021/22, the precise numbers of examples of evidence must be sufficient to meet the assessment criteria and the precise number requested in OCR assignments 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 assignment, the centre assessor must focus on the purpose of the qualification.  It is important they are confident that the candidate has demonstrated competency.

For example:

• In Unit 5, Handling Mail, the OCR assignment requires the student to handle 15 pieces of incoming mail, including parcels, and 10 pieces of outgoing mail, including parcels. If a candidate has been carrying out real work in a post room, for example, then these exact numbers are not required but the learner must meet the assessment criteria. The centre assessor should use their judgement to determine if the candidate has performed the tasks consistently at the required standard. 
• Professional discussion and witness testimonies 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 candidate’s registration period) when the candidate was handling mail but was not being directly observed for assessment.

Adjustments to assessment requirements for demonstrating competency in printing/reproducing hard copy

Hard copy documents are not required to demonstrate competency. The candidate can use alternative forms of evidence to demonstrate competence such as:

• Using evidence from other units (cross-referencing)
• Printing to pdf.
• Submitting a screenshot of the print preview screen.
• Professional discussion and witness testimony to confirm that the learner understands the skills required to print or reproduce hard copy

The centre assessor must be confident that the candidate has demonstrated competency.

Guidance on methods and forms of evidence

Audio or video evidence of a real or simulated work activity taking place

• The assessor could observe the OCR candidate carrying out practical work activity remotely in real time using a secure digital meeting platform. A practical work activity can be a real work task or a simulation.
• Secure on-line meeting platforms can be used for group practical activities.
• A candidate could record themselves and upload the recorded evidence to be assessed at a later time. (This must be a video recording so the assessor can observe the OCR candidate and authenticate the evidence as the candidate’s own work.)

Professional discussion and witness testimony

• When used as an alternative to an observed practical activity, it needs to be backed up with work outputs/products that clearly indicate what the candidate is able to do to meet the achievement of competence-based assessment criteria.
• When used as an alternative to gathering further written evidence from candidates, they can refer back to an event or activity retrospectively as long as the event took place during the Learner’s registration period.
• Witness testimonies and professional discussions should be backed up, where possible, with other authenticated candidate-generated evidence or reports.
• Witness testimonies must be individual and must reflect what was actually observed. They cannot be generic statements used for two or more candidates.
• Professional discussion can be used to confirm product evidence and skills-based evidence to test the candidate’s competence/understanding. Where written evidence is weak then a professional discussion can be used to try and draw out further evidence from the candidate. 
• 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 task, a professional discussion might provide evidence to cover gaps in units. A discussion based on a typical work scenario must 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 to carry out the task and why.
• Witness testimonies and discussions with candidates to capture evidence of their knowledge/understanding can be digitally recorded. (Audio-only recordings are suitable.)

Authenticated reflective accounts, authenticated candidate-produced reports

• Authenticated candidate-produced reports are acceptable if the authentication is confirmed by a trained and knowledgeable individual who has no relationship with the learner (that includes family members even if they provide work experience).
• Gaps in evidence can be filled by cross-referencing to previous relevant achievement in other units. It must be clear that the candidate still meets the assessment requirements of the unit.
• These must be signed by a responsible, objective individual and would benefit from being backed up with other evidence such as questions and answers.
• Photographs can be used as evidence to accompany stronger types of evidence. Where they are used the candidate must be clearly identified in the photograph. The scene should be of a genuine activity and not be posed. Note: photographs are not reliable as a primary source of evidence of a practical task as they are unlikely to show that the candidate is meeting the criteria when carrying out a task.

Using evidence from other units (cross referencing)

• Previous achievement in other units can sometimes provide supporting evidence of a candidate’s performance. There is detailed guidance on how to cross reference to other units at the end of the guidance.
• Many units do require evidence which demonstrate the same skills for example Unit 1, AC2.1 requires learners to follow instructions to complete routine administrative tasks. Almost all units within Level one asks the learner to carryout tasks in line with organisational policies and procedures.  Evidence from these tasks could be used as Evidence for AC2.1.

Any alternative forms of evidence must still meet the assessment criteria and requirements.

General guidance on producing evidence

Simulated activity must be carried out in a professional manner and present as realistic a scenario as possible.  Any simulation must be conducted in an atmosphere of professionalism as would be required in the workplace.  The arrangements for simulation must be set up by centre assessors, not the candidates. 

Professional discussions, question and answer discussions and simulated activities must not permit the use of leading questions. 

You must be assured that the candidate’s work is their own. Candidates must not submit work that includes evidence copied from other sources without proper attribution.

Real time and recorded activity must be focussed on the candidate activity and it must be obvious it is the candidate performing the activity throughout.  All talking/discussion must be clearly audible.  Recordings to be viewed at a later date must confirm the name of the candidate and date of activity.

Centres must give consideration to Safeguarding and the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) when using live video and audio evidence and when recording it and using still images/photographs.  Consent must be obtained from all parties who need to be part of the activity that is being viewed remotely or recorded. 

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 candidates 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.  

Any adaptations in this guidance are in place for 2021/22.  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 used when you submit candidate evidence and a copy of the Interchange claim. This Adaptation Declaration sheet can be downloaded below. You will need to confirm that any adaptations to assessment are in line with the permitted adaptations 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.

Administration (Business Professional) submission cover sheet (2021/22)

Appendix 1 - Guidance on using evidence from other units (cross referencing)

Please note that these qualifications allow users to select optional units from levels above and below the level of the target qualification, i.e.:

• Level 1 Administration (Business Professional) allows students to select units from Level 1 and Level 2
• Level 2 Administration (Business Professional) allows students to select units from Level 1, Level 2 and Level 3
• Level 3 Administration (Business Professional) allows students to select units from Level 2, Level 3 and Level 4
• Level 4 Administration (Business Professional) allows students to select units from Level 3 and Level 4.

Before using the table below it is essential that Centres check to ensure that the units selected are compatible with the scheme requirements as the range of options are limited depending upon final award (See Rules of Combinations)

Centres should note that evidence can be cross-referenced to units of the same level or, in the case of Levels 2, 3 and 4 schemes, at levels above and below the scheme level.  However, when using evidence from a lower level unit e.g. Level 2 to a unit above e.g. Level 3, it is unlikely that the evidence, on its own will be sufficient to meet the requirements of the higher level and some additional work will be required.

If you use cross referencing it must be clear to the OCR moderator exactly what the student has already achieved.  If all the units involved are not part of the same claim you must provide a copy of the work that shows previous achievement.  It should be clearly marked with the name of the student and the other units it supports.  If the evidence of previous achievement is part of a larger piece of work it must be clear which part of the work is being used for cross referencing.