Strengthening vocational and technical qualifications

Evaluation of the functioning of internal assessment in existing national technical and vocational qualifications.

Documents

Strengthening vocational and technical qualifications

Ref: 18/6459/1PDF, 168KB, 7 pages

 

 

 

An exploration of grade inflation in ‘older style’ level 3 BTEC Nationals: 2006 to 2016

Ref: 18/6459/2PDF, 4.84MB, 76 pages

Details

In April 2018, we said in our corporate plan that we would be looking closely at those vocational and technical qualifications that play an important role in schools and colleges, many of which feature in the government’s accountability measures. We signalled that we intended to regulate these qualifications with the same seriousness and focus as we do general qualifications.

Part of this commitment was to evaluate the functioning of internal assessment in existing national technical and vocational qualifications. Against this backdrop, we have conducted research into grade inflation in some ‘older style’ Applied General qualifications, with a particular focus on those with 100% internal assessment that have been used for accountability purposes. It is important to note that this research did not consider the ‘new’ Applied General qualifications introduced in 2016 that were developed following changes to the Government’s performance table rules to incorporate external assessment and a core set of mandatory content.