Guidance

T5 online v traditional marking: guide to the data submission process

Published 19 March 2021

Applies to England

Introduction

In order to fulfil our regulatory and accreditation functions as set out in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, we require awarding organisations to provide exams delivery data for regulated qualifications. We collect the data on behalf of CCEA Regulation and share this data with them.

What data will be collected?

Data, will be collected for GCSE, AS and A-level. The figures should include applied subjects, short courses and overseas entries.

When will data be collected?

Data will be collected according to the reporting schedule which is agreed and maintained by Ofqual’s data services team.

Updates to formats and guidance

This guidance document will be updated regularly. Any changes to procedure will be incorporated into the guidance document.

How to submit your data

Your data should be submitted to us in CSV format. Please refer to the ‘Connecting to Ofqual’s data portal and uploading data’ document on our webpage to help you submit your files to us. If you need to ask us about a data submission please do contact the Data Services team by emailing data.services@ofqual.gov.uk, please do not send your data files via email to Data Services or to any other Ofqual email address, or via Contact the Regulator in the Portal.

Uploaded data

Once files have been successfully uploaded, the data will be validated against a set of validation rules. These are detailed in the sections below. If validation is successful, the data is automatically transferred into our systems and you will receive email confirmation. If the file is unsuccessful at any stage of validation you will receive an email with details of the validation failure. Please correct your file and resubmit it.

Amendments to data

Ofqual staff will not alter data once it has been submitted. If you find an error or omission after you’ve had a successful upload, please notify us by emailing data.services@ofqual.gov.uk. We need to reject the existing submission before you can upload a new file.

How your data will be used

This data will be used to undertake our regulatory activities and, where required, to produce Official Statistics to fulfil our responsibility as a government department.

General completion guidelines

This template should be country specific. Awarding organisations should enter a row of data for each country i.e. England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Other UK Regions and Non UK.

Please exclude endorsement papers.

Numeric values must not have any formatting.

File format

The file must be CSV format and the first row must be headers as displayed in the ‘Name’ column of the table below. The subsequent rows must have the values of the data to be reported which must match the format and validation rules below.

Name Description Position Validation Regular Expression Description of Regular Expression
Exam series Exam series data relates to e.g. June 2023 1 ^(January|March|June|November)([ ][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])$ Full month name of exam series and year
Awarding organisation Name of the awarding organisation 2 ^.{1,100}$ One, to one hundred characters accepted
Reporting date Date the file was due to be submitted regardless of when it was actually uploaded. Format accepted 120 ODBC canonical yyyy-mm-dd 3 ^(20)\d\d[-](0[1-9]|1[012])[-](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$ The date in the following format: day (two digits), forward slash, month (two digits), forward slash, year (four digits), or: year (four digits), a dash, month (two digits), a dash, day (two digits)
Qualification Level and type of qualification for example GCSE, AS, A level 4 ^(GCSE|AS|A level)$ One of the following list: GCSE, AS, A level
Country For awarding organisation’s to enter the specific country the data relates to for example England, Wales, Northern Ireland 5 ^(England|Wales|Northern Ireland|Non UK|Other UK Regions)$ England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Non UK andOther UK Regions will be accepted
Papers marked online Total number of papers marked online 6 ^\d{1,7}$ A numeric value between 0 and 9,999,999 accepted
Candidate scripts marked online Total number of candidate scripts marked online 7 ^\d{1,7}$ A numeric value between 0 and 9,999,999 accepted
Papers traditionally marked Total number of papers marked traditionally 8 ^\d{1,7}$ A numeric value between 0 and 9,999,999 accepted
Candidate scripts traditionally marked Total number of candidate scripts marked traditionally 9 ^\d{1,7}$ A numeric value between 0 and 9,999,999 accepted
Non-examination assessments marked Total number of non- examination assessments marked for example internal assessment, coursework 10 ^\d{1,7}$ A numeric value between 0 and 9,999,999 accepted
Candidate non-examination assessments marked Total number of candidates’ non- examination assessments marked for example internal assessment, coursework 11 ^\d{1,7}$ A numeric value between 0 and 9,999,999 accepted

Contacts

For all queries relating to the data collection process, amendments to data previously provided, or for general guidance. please contact:

Data services

Ofqual
2nd floor, 1 Friargate
Station Square
Coventry
CV1 2GN