Guidance

Access arrangements - number of referrals: 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.

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.

What data will be collected?

Data on the number of referrals made to awarding organisation will be collected for GCSE, AS and A level. If you offer these qualifications, you must upload a line of data for it, even if it is a line of zeros.

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 web page.(https://www.gov.uk/guidance/submitting-data-to-ofqual) to help you submit your files to us. If you need to ask us about a data submission please contact the Data Services team. 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 email. 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.

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.

General completion guidelines

Data should be supplied on the number of referrals received in an academic year.

Name	Description	Position	Validation Regular Expression	Description of Regular Expression
Exam series	Exam series data relates to, for example, June 2016	1	^(January|March|June|November)([ ][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])$	Full month name of exam series and year.
Awarding organisation	Awarding organisation name	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 either 103 British/French dd/mm/yyyy, or 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	4	^(GCSE|AS|A level)$	One of the following list: GCSE, AS, A level
Number of referrals	Number of referrals	5	^.{1,4}$	A numeric value between 0 and 9,999 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

Email Data.Services@ofqual.gov.uk