Next assessment arrangements for Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals

This update has been revised since its original publication on 17 July 2020. We have now confirmed the results dates for the November 2020 series.

We are pleased to be able to confirm the next assessment arrangements for Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals. Following feedback from teachers:

• Moderated units will be available on-demand for Cambridge Technicals from the autumn and in the November and January series for Cambridge Nationals.
• Examined units will be available in the January 2021 series. There will be no Cambridge Nationals or Cambridge Technicals examinations in the autumn.

Please see below for more details.

Cambridge Technicals moderated units

Cambridge Technicals moderated units are available on-demand as normal. There will be no changes to the grading criteria for moderation in the autumn. Where we provide an assignment for a unit, there will be no changes to the assignments.

We will not be offering visiting moderation for Cambridge Technicals when centres return after the summer holidays. Instead we will be providing remote moderation. We will provide more details about how this will work and when you will be able to arrange your moderation as soon as we have further information, which is likely to be during the summer holidays.

November 2020: Cambridge Nationals moderated units

For Cambridge Nationals, the November 2020 series will be available as usual for moderated units only via postal and OCR Repository moderation. There will be no visiting moderation.

In addition, we will be offering the moderated units for Information Technologies and Enterprise and Marketing units. These will follow the same timelines as the other Cambridge Nationals moderated units.

The key dates for this series are as follows:

Please note there will be no changes to the assignments and no changes to the marking criteria for November 2020 submissions. If your students have completed units that you were planning to submit in the June 2020 series, we recommend you submit them in the November 2020 series.

January 2021: Cambridge Nationals moderated and examined units; Cambridge Technicals (2016) examined units

Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals examinations will be available in the January series. We will also be offering Cambridge Nationals moderated units with postal and OCR Repository moderation – visiting moderation will not be available.

The provisional key dates for this series are as follows:

Who can take assessments in autumn?

Any candidate can enter for and take assessments in autumn, although we understand it will mainly be useful for those who completed work last year:

• Candidates who will receive a calculated qualification result for summer 2020 (usually Years 11 and 13), can submit work for moderation if they think it could improve their summer 2020 result. The best result will still stand.
• Candidates who are partway through their programme of study (usually Years 9, 10 or 12) can enter/claim work already produced for summer 2020. We will use these unit results to contribute to their qualification result when they are ready to complete the qualification.

Planning for assessments in 2020/21

We understand you are anxious to hear information that will help you to plan for your 2020/21 assessments. We are currently working with our regulators to confirm the details of the assessment arrangements and will let you know as soon as they are available. However, we recommend you start delivering the content you had already planned to deliver in autumn 2020.

We would like to reassure you that our arrangements are still in place for students who are currently in Years 9, 10 or 12 who planned to take assessments in June 2020 and complete their qualification in 2021. We will calculate an assessed grade for units intended to be entered in summer 2020, which will be used towards a qualification completed in 2021.

If you have any queries, please call our Customer Support Centre on 01223 553998 or email us at vocational.qualifications@ocr.org.uk