Remote moderation

Functional Skills qualifications are on-demand qualifications, and assessments can take place at any time at a centre’s request. 

Where external moderation is required, the candidate work is then submitted to be moderated by an OCR examiner-moderator.

Once you have made your entries, you can carry out the assessment. Information about the assessment for each qualification can be found in the centre handbooks, which are available from the relevant qualification pages.  

Once your candidates have completed units of the qualification, you can claim for their unit or full awards by making a claim via Interchange. 

There are no specific deadlines for making certification claims; however, you must only make claims when you are confident the requirements for the unit have been met. 

Step-by-step instructions for making a claim are provided in the following guide:

Within 24 hours of submitting your claim, you need to send the candidate work for all the candidates for whom you have made a claim to your examiner-moderator.

There are a number of methods for submitting your work; please refer to the relevant centre handbook for the available methods for each qualification.

Your OCR examiner-moderator will confirm or edit the claim as appropriate. They will then send it to OCR to process and you will get an email to say the claim has been sent to OCR. 

To view the actual claims sent:

1. Log in to Interchange, hover over ‘Certification claims’ and click on ‘View claim history’ in the left-hand menu. 
2. Your most recent claim should be at the top of the list (look for Finalised/Processed statuses). 
3. You can filter by qualification and order your list of claims by clicking on the column headings.

For vocational qualifications with remotely moderated units, once moderation is complete, the examiner-moderator will produce a centre feedback report for each batch of work submitted. This form is a multi-purpose document which is used to: 

• Record the examiner-moderator’s adjustments to the centre’s assessment or administration 
• Provide feedback to the centre on possible issues with the centre’s assessment or administration. 

To view the report, log in to Interchange, hover over ‘Centre information’ and then click on ‘Examiner-moderator reports’. 

If the examiner-moderator finds the standard of centre assessment is not consistent enough to ensure sample moderation will be successful, the claim will be withdrawn. The centre assessor will then be responsible for re-assessing the work before re-submitting the claim. 

Feedback reports are not available via Interchange for claims that have been withdrawn completely. However, we will email a copy of the report to the designated contact in the centre (usually the exams officer).