Unit-level changes to Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals confirmed

We’re committed to supporting everyone to deliver Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals and helping you deal with the on-going challenges of COVID-19 in 2020-21. We shared proposals for adapting Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals with you at the end of September and we can now confirm the final unit-level changes in place to meet public health requirements.

Unit-level adaptations to make delivery easier for you

We’ve reviewed all the units in our Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals being taken this academic year so we can provide you with guidance at qualification and unit level on changes to requirements or alternative approaches to support public health guidance.

These changes are designed to make units to be taken in 2020/21 possible to complete, given the constraints you are working with, and to make sure that the learning outcomes and assessment criteria can still be met. The adaptations depend on the nature of the unit but include changes to make delivery easier for you such as:

• simplifying tasks so that less equipment and fewer specialist facilities are needed
• adjusting requirements so that some activities or tasks, such as sport coaching sessions, do not need to be done as many times.

We’ve now published guides on our website which clearly set out the changes for each affected Cambridge National unit. For some units, there are no changes. Guides for Cambridge Technical units are also being published on the website as soon as they are completed so the full set will be available shortly. These should be used, alongside specifications and assignments, to plan and carry out assessments.

Other proposals

Assessed grades: As well as confirming our unit-level changes, we can also confirm that we’ll be providing assessed grades for those units that could not be assessed in summer 2020. Where a student was due to take an assessment in summer 2020 and could not do so, an assessed grade will be available to them for the unit(s) in question. The assessment does not need to be taken.

Reduced number of assessments overall: Unfortunately we’re not in a position to reduce the number of assessments overall for those completing the qualification this year. Should we see further disruption to teaching, learning and assessment, we will let you know if we are able to implement any additional adaptations. In the meantime, we recommend you complete assessments as soon as you can. Focus on mandatory assessments first, followed by optional assessments for any outstanding units to be taken this year. To support you, we’re offering Q&A webinars with our subject advisors and our Customer Support Team is on hand to answer any questions.

Thank you for your patience as we continue discussions with the DfE and our regulator Ofqual. We will keep you updated with any further measures to help you better manage the challenges of COVID-19.

Dates

We published our provisional summer 2021 exam timetable for Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals on 22 October. We are considering your responses and will publish updated timetables at the same time as updates to the GCSE/A Level summer 2021 exam timetable. We expect this to be next week.

To repeat a message in last Friday’s weekly roundup, we'd really encourage you to submit some, or as many of your moderated units for Cambridge Nationals as you can, ahead of the summer 2021 series. To support this, there will be no late entry fees applied for moderated units for the January series. Late entry fees for examined units in January will still apply. If you are able to complete moderated units, please continue to submit entries to us at any point up to the end of 2020.