Guidance

Standard Qualification Fee: guide to the data submission process

Updated 21 September 2026

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 the following data for regulated qualifications.

This data will be used to undertake our regulatory activities and to fulfil our responsibility as a government department. In particular, this data is used in the annual publication of the qualification price statistics report and qualification price statistics interactive visualisation. Publishing this data helps qualification purchasers and potential purchasers to more easily access fee information and support them to make informed decisions.

What data will be collected?

Data should relate to the current Standard Qualification Fee which is defined in the statutory guidance for our General Conditions of Recognition, Condition F.

Qualifications in scope

The vast majority of regulated qualifications are in scope of this collection. This includes Ofqual-regulated End-Point Assessments. Further information can be found in the statutory guidance for our General Conditions of Recognition, Condition F.

The Data Portal will automatically send a pre-populated template of qualifications in scope for the Standard Qualification Fee data collection.

The pre-populated template contains an extract of your qualifications from Ofqual’s Register of Regulated Qualifications which are available to learners (that is, the data collection start date is between the qualification operational start and end dates) and offered in England on the day the data collection opens.

Countries in scope

Data should be included for all qualifications offered in:

• England

Time period in scope

The Standard Qualification Fee as at the date of submission should be included for qualifications that are included in the pre-populated template.

When data will be collected

Data will be collected according to the reporting schedule which is updated regularly.

How to submit your data

The Data Portal will automatically send you a pre-populated template of qualifications for the Standard Qualification Fee data collection approximately a month before the submission deadline

Your data must be submitted to us in CSV format. Please refer to the Connecting to Ofqual’s data portal and uploading data document for more information. 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 or via Contact the Regulator in the Portal.

Nil returns are not accepted. Please contact the Data Services team if any further information is needed.

Uploaded data

Once files have been successfully uploaded, the data will be validated against a set of validation rules.

If validation is successful, the data is automatically transferred into Ofqual’s internal 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.

The specific validation rules which are in place for this template are detailed in the ‘validation rules’ and ‘file format’ sections below.

Amendments to data

Errors or omissions in the data

Once the data has been successfully uploaded, it will be checked by Ofqual staff. If an error or omission is spotted, the data may be queried, and you may be requested to resubmit it. We will need to reject your existing submission ahead of a resubmission.

If you find an error or omission after you’ve had a successful upload, please notify Data Services by email. We need to reject the existing submission before you can upload a new file.

If you wish to see your latest submission of a data return, for example to check the submission if it has been queried, please know it is available to download in the data portal.

Scheduled revisions of data

Each submission of this data is intended to show a snapshot in time. Therefore, there will be no resubmissions required to reflect any further updates to the data already submitted, unless an error or omission is spotted.

General completion guidelines

1. Numeric values must not have any formatting.
2. All fields are mandatory unless otherwise specified.
3. Do not change the pre-populated fields in the template. Fill in the Standard Qualification Fee column only.
4. If there are options for qualification delivery, for example learner routes and/or delivery methods, submit the Standard Qualification Fee as per the statutory guidance for our General Conditions of Recognition, Condition F.
5. Refer to the statutory guidance for our General Conditions of Recognition, Condition F regarding use of the data exemption option (-2) in the template.  This will only apply in exceptional circumstances.
6. Submit the current Standard Qualification Fee even if you expect the Standard Qualification Fee to change in future.
7. ‘Reporting Date’ is pre-populated in the template. Microsoft programs automatically change the default date formatting. In that case, ‘Reporting Date’ must be reformatted to the yyyy-mm-dd format before submission. To do this, select the relevant column, right-click, choose ‘Format Cells’, select ‘Custom’, and enter yyyy-mm-dd. Reopening the file in a Microsoft program will reformat the date again. To avoid this issue, format the dates, save the file, and refrain from reopening it in Microsoft programs. Alternatively, use a different application, such as a notepad, to open the template.

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. In the pre-populated template, ‘Reporting Date’ is pre-populated with the collection due date and fields 2 to 6 are pre-populated with the Register extract.

Name	Description	Position	Description of Regular Expression	Validation Regular Expression
Reporting Date	Date the file was due to be submitted to Ofqual regardless of when it was actually uploaded (this date will be made available by Ofqual)	1	The date in the following format: year (4 digits), a dash, month (2 digits), a dash, day-of-month (2 digits) Format accepted: yyyy-mm-dd	^(20)\d\d[-](0[1-9]|1[012])[-](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$
Awarding Organisation	Awarding organisation acronym as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated organisations. Pre-populated field	2	1 to 100 characters accepted	^.{1,100}$
Qualification Number	The unique identifier for the qualification as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated qualifications, for example, 123/1234/1. Pre-populated field	3	Valid qualification number. 1 to 10 characters accepted	^.{1,10}$
Qualification Title	Title of qualification as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated organisations Pre-populated field	4	1 to 1,000 characters accepted	^.{1,1000}$
Qualification Level	Level of qualification as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated organisations. Pre-populated field	5	1 to 20 characters accepted	^.{1,20}$
Qualification Type	Type of qualification as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated organisations. Pre-populated field	6	1 to 255 characters accepted	^.{1,255}$
Standard Qualification Fee	The current standard qualification fee advertised for purchasers in England. Values should be in GBP Further guidance, particularly where there may be several options for a standard qualification fee (e.g. for a qualification with several options) can be found in the statutory guidance for General Conditions of Recognition, Condition F	7	Up to 15-digit number with up to 2 decimals accepted Currency symbols not permitted -2 accepted for exceptions	^\d{1,15}(\.\d{1,2})?$|-2

Validation rules

A data submission is only considered complete once it has successfully passed the validation rules.

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. A file may be successful but with warnings. Warnings will not cause failure in the validation process but will highlight entries which may need to be checked. You will receive an email with details of the warning in an attached “Data Validation Warnings Report”. If you receive this, please review the report and  contact Ofqual Data Services should the data require any amendment.

The validation rules for this template check that each field is correctly formatted. The correct formatting of the fields are detailed in the ‘file format’ section. Failure to format the fields in line with the validation regular expression will result in unsuccessful validation. Additional validation rules are also in place for this template and may include cross-referencing with other templates. These validation rules along with whether they result in failure or a warning are detailed in the following table.

Validation rule	Result if not met
All ReportingDate values match date the file was due to be submitted to Ofqual regardless of when it was actually uploaded (this date will be made available by Ofqual)	Fail and rejected
Awarding Organisation is valid acronym in Ofqual register	Fail and rejected
Qualification Number is a valid qualification number in scope of this collection	Fail and rejected

Recent changes to this guidance

Date of change	Description of change
21/09/2026	Updated the document template and clarified aspects of the text. No changes to requirements.
18/12/2025	Link to the publication of Standard Qualification Fee data in 2025 was added.
14/02/2025	A note was added to the guidance regarding date column data formatting.