Guidance

Appeals in vocational and technical qualifications: guide to the data submission process

Updated 30 August 2023

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.

What data will be collected?

Data on appeals made for assessments taken or decisions made during the latest, full academic year (1 September to 31 August).

The data should include all appeals relating to candidates for the following qualifications and learners in centres in England:

• all Tech Awards, Tech Certs, Tech Levels and Applied Generals
• all Functional Skills Qualifications (FSQs)
• all ESOL Skills For Life Qualifications
• all Core Maths, IB Diplomas, and Cambridge Pre-Us

The data should only include appeals against assessments taken or decisions made during the latest, full academic year and should include both ‘in-progress’ and completed appeals. Appeals made outside of this time period should not be included, for example, an appeal completed in 2021 to 2022 for an appeal made in 2020 to 2021 should not be included.

Please note, a request for a review of marking or moderation is a separate process and should not be included in this template. However, appeals against the outcome of a review of marking or moderation should be included.

When will data be collected?

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

There will be 2 reporting deadlines for this collection, to capture the progress of appeals at different points in time. The data submitted should reflect the current status of all appeals made during the academic year at the data cut-off point.

General completion guidelines

1. Numeric values must not have any formatting.
2. Appeals not related to candidates (for example, centre staff appealing a maladministration sanction) should not be included in this submission.
3. Where multiple assessments are being appealed, each assessment should be counted as a separate appeal. Where a centre appeals on behalf of a group of candidates, this should be counted as one appeal, if it is all relating to the same assessment.
4. The field ‘AppealsReceived’ is designed for us to understand the volumes of appeals you are receiving. Please report on all appeals received, whether they have been completed or not, by the data cut-off date.
5. The ‘AppealsRejected’ field is designed to capture the number of appeals you have received which you have decided not to progress, for example, because they have been made on invalid grounds.
6. The field ‘NumberOfCandidates’ is designed to capture the number of unique candidates involved in all of the appeal requests you have received for each qualification, type of decision and ground of appeal combination. This may be different to the number of qualification grades challenged. Where candidates are involved in multiple appeals on a single row, they should only appear once in ‘NumberOfCandidates’.
7. A complete appeal is one that has an outcome (that is, upheld or not upheld) and any grade changes as a result of the appeal have been determined and the appeal is not expected to progress to a further appeal stage at the point of data cut-off. Any appeals which have been completed at one stage and have progressed to another and the outcome is yet to be determined should not be included in the figures for completed appeals. Appeals which progress through multiple stages should be classified as one appeal and if the status of these changes between data submissions then please update the data as necessary.
8. The ‘TypeOfDecisionAppealed’ field is designed to separate out the types of decisions that are subject to appeals from the grounds of appeal. This template is therefore at the level of ‘GroundOfAppeal’ for each ‘TypeOfDecisionAppealed’ for each qualification number. Please note that you only need to include rows for the types of decision and ground of appeal that you have received. You do not need to submit blank rows or rows of zeros for any that you have not received.
9. Data on appeals made on multiple grounds should be submitted using the ‘multiple’ value under ‘GroundOfAppeal’ and should not be included under two or more other categories. For example, an appeal made on the grounds of ‘administrative error – centre’ and ‘procedural error – centre’ should be included under the ‘multiple’ ground of appeal category and not under both the ‘administrative error – centre’ and ‘procedural error – centre’ categories and therefore double counted in the data.
10. Please note that you should report only qualification level grades that were challenged and, if applicable, changed. If the effect on qualification level grade is unknown at the data cut-off point (for example, mid-flight learners where overall qualification grade is not yet known), please report these cases in fields relating to Appeals and ‘NumberOfCandidates’ (fields 8 to 13) but not in fields relating to Grades (fields 14 to 18).

File format

You will need to submit the file through Ofqual’s Data Portal. 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. An example of the CSV file is provided as a separate download.

Notes: If a file needs to be submitted again, any previous files submitted will need to be rejected by Ofqual’s Data Services team before an updated file can be submitted You will need to contact data.services@ofqual.gov.uk to notify us if you intend to resubmit a file.

The table below can be scrolled horizontally to show more columns.

Name	Description	Position	Validation Regular Expression	Description of regular expression
ReportingDate	Date the file was due to be submitted regardless of when it was actually uploaded	1	^(20)\d\d[-](0[1-9]|1[012])[-](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$	The date in the following format: year (4 digits), a dash, month (2 digits), a dash, day (2 digits) Format accepted 120 ODBC canonical yyyy-mm-dd
AcademicYear	Academic year that the appeal was requested, for example 2020-2021	2	^(20)\d\d[-](20)\d\d$	The academic year in the following format: start year (4 digits), a dash, end year (4 digits) Format accepted yyyy-yyyy
AwardingOrganisation	Name of the awarding organisation	3	^.{1,100}$	1 to 100 characters accepted
QualificationNumber	Qualification Number for example 123/1234/1	4	^.{1,10}$	1 to 10 characters accepted
QualificationTitle	The qualification title as it appears on Ofqual’s Register	5	^.{1,100}$	1 to 100 characters accepted
TypeOfDecisionAppealed	The type of decision that is being appealed	6	^(Component or qualification result|Malpractice or maladministration|Reasonable adjustment|Special consideration)$	Accepted values: Component or qualification result Malpractice or maladministration Reasonable adjustment Special consideration
GroundOfAppeal	Ground of appeal	7	^(Administrative error - centre|Administrative error - AO|Procedural inconsistency - centre|Procedural inconsistency - AO|Unreasonable exercise of academic judgement - centre|Unreasonable exercise of academic judgement - AO|Multiple|-2)$	Accepted values: Administrative error - centre Administrative error - AO Procedural inconsistency - centre Procedural inconsistency - AO Unreasonable exercise of academic judgement - centre Unreasonable exercise of academic judgement - AO Multiple -2 (to be used in cases where the nature of appeal is unknown or not a valid nature of appeal) See Annex A for further guidance
AppealsReceived	Number of appeals received, for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification	8	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
NumberOfCandidates	Number of candidates involved in all appeals received for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification	9	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
AppealsRejected	Number of appeals rejected, for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification	10	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
CompletedAppeals	Number of completed appeals, for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification	11	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
AppealsUpheld	Number of appeals upheld, for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification	12	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
AppealsNotUpheld	Number of appeals not upheld, for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification	13	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
GradesChallenged	Number of qualification grades challenged, for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification. Upheld appeals only	14	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
NoGradeChange	Number of qualification grades that remained unchanged, for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification. Upheld appeals only	15	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
GradeChangeUp	Number of qualification grades changed upwards, for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification. Upheld appeals only	16	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
GradeChangeDown	Number of qualification grades changed downwards, for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification. Upheld appeals only	17	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
GradeChangeTBD	Number of qualification grade changes still to be determined, for each type of decision and ground of appeal, per qualification, as the appeal is not yet complete. Upheld appeals only	18	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted

Annex A: Grounds of appeals

Some guidance to understand the ground of appeal values is given below:

• Administrative error - centre: the centre made an administrative error, for example a centre has mad an error in the process of a special consideration request.

• Administrative error - AO: the awarding organisation made an administrative error for example a special consideration application isn’t processed correctly.

• Procedural inconsistency - centre: the centre did not apply a procedure correctly, for example a centre did not submit a learners work by the specific deadline.

• Procedural inconsistency - AO: the awarding organisation did not apply a procedure correctly, for example escalations by AO staff were not followed and effected the outcome of the learners result such as IT issues with learner evidence.

• Unreasonable exercise of academic judgement - centre: the centre made an unreasonable exercise of academic judgement in the choice of evidence from which they determined a grade and/or in the determination of a grade from that evidence for internal assessments.

• Unreasonable exercise of academic judgement - AO: the awarding organisation made an unreasonable exercise of academic judgement while awarding marks to an assessment completed by a candidate.

Contacts

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