Guidance has been provided for schools and colleges on how to gather and retain evidence of student performance for use in the unlikely event that exams are unable to go ahead.

Following consultation, the Department for Education (DfE) and Ofqual have published guidance as part of long-term contingency arrangements to improve the resilience of the qualifications system. If exams are unable to go ahead at a national level, student evidence could be used to inform a system of Teacher Assessed Grades (TAGs).

The guidance advises schools and colleges to gather evidence in line with their existing internal assessment arrangements as far as possible, and to avoid over-assessment of students:

• Students should sit at least one set of mocks in exam conditions before their formal exams. They shouldn’t know the questions beforehand or have access to books or revision notes.  Mocks should be taken under timed conditions and whilst they should cover the assessment objectives for the qualification, students should only be assessed on content they have been taught.
• Where possible, students taking a particular qualification should be assessed using the same material at the same time, or using different materials at different times. Where this is not possible, schools and colleges should try to ensure that students are not able to predict the assessment materials. The total assessment time should not normally exceed the total time students would spend taking exams for the qualification.
• Students should be told, where possible, before taking any assessment, whether their performance could be used as evidence.

Student assessment evidence, either the original or a copy, must be retained by the school or college, digitally or physically.

The published guidance applies to GCSEs, A/AS Levels, and Project Qualifications. For VTQs and other qualifications, Awarding Organisations must consider whether resilience arrangements are needed and, if necessary, provide guidance to schools and colleges on gathering evidence of student performance. Further information on how the guidance impacts on OCR qualifications is available on the OCR website.