Guidance

Modified papers: 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 publication of the Official Statistics report: Access arrangements for GCSE, AS and A level.

Northern Ireland data will also be shared with CCEA regulation to fulfil their own purposes as a regulator.

What data will be collected?

Data should relate to requests made for modified papers for the time period and qualifications in scope of the collection.

Qualifications in scope

The following qualification types are in scope of this collection:

• GCSE (including short course)
• AS
• A level

Data should only include exams, not non-exam assessments.

Countries in scope

Data should be included for all students in centres in:

• England
• Northern Ireland (also collected on behalf of CCEA regulation)
• Wales
• Other UK
• Non-UK

Time period in scope

Data is collected once per academic year, including both the latest June and November exam series. For detail on the exam series in scope of each return please see the reporting schedule.

When data will be collected

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

How to submit your data

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.

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

The following additional guidance has been provided for completing this template:

1. Numeric values must not have any formatting.
2. All fields are mandatory unless otherwise specified.
3. This template is designed to capture data on requests for modified papers made for the exam series. It only applies to requests for modified papers made by centres to exam boards, not where modified papers are produced directly by centres without a request being made.
4. Submit 1 row of data per qualification per country.
5. Rows for qualifications only need to be included where modified papers have been requested. For qualifications with no modified paper requests, there is no need to submit rows of data (for example, rows of only zeros).
6. ‘TotalModifiedPaperRequests’ is the actual number of modified papers requested, regardless of whether they were granted. If 10 Braille papers were requested for one maths paper, this would count as 10, not 1, despite them being for the same paper.
7. ‘TotalDiscreteModifiedPapers’ refers to the number of individual types of modified papers or assessments produced per question paper or assessment. For example, if five Braille papers and five A4 18-point bold papers were produced, for the same maths question paper, this would count as two discrete modified papers. If there were two maths papers (paper A & B) this would count as four discrete modified papers.
8. Each field showing the category of modified papers is for the number granted. Adding all these categories together, should give a figure very close to the number of requests, with any difference being because some requests were rejected.

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	Description of Regular Expression	Validation Regular Expression
ReportingDate	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])$
Exam series	Exam series data relates to, for example June 2024	2	Full month name of exam series and year.	^(June|November)([ ][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])$
AwardingOrganisation	Awarding organisation acronym as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated organisations	3	1 to 150 characters accepted	^.{1,150}$
Qualification	Type of qualification	4	Accepted values: • GCSE • AS • A level	^(GCSE|AS|A level)$
Country	The country the data relates to	5	Accepted values: • England • Wales • Northern Ireland • Non UK • Other UK Regions	^(England|Wales|Northern Ireland|Non UK|Other UK Regions)$
Total number of modified paper requests	Total number of modified paper requests from the awarding organisation, regardless of whether they were granted	6	1 to 8 digits accepted	^\d{1,8)$
Total number of candidates granted modified papers	Total number of unique candidates granted modified papers	7	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$
No. of Braille papers & Braille labels granted	Number of Braille question papers and tactile diagrams with Braille labels granted	8	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$
No. of Modified 18 point bold papers granted	Number of modified 18-point bold papers granted	9	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$
No. of Modified 24 point bold papers granted	Number of modified 24-point bold papers granted	10	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$
No. of Modified 36 point bold papers granted	Number of modified 36-point bold papers granted	11	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$
Modified language granted	Modified language papers granted	12	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$
No. of Tactile Diagrams with print labels granted	Number of tactile diagrams with print labels granted	13	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$
No. of Transcripts of listening test/video granted	Number of transcripts of listening test/video granted	14	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$
No. of Non-interactive electronic QPs granted	Number of non-interactive electronic question papers granted	15	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$
Number of other formats granted	Number of other formats granted	16	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$
Total number of discrete modified papers produced	Total number of discrete modified papers produced. See general completion guidelines for more detail	17	1 to 4 digits accepted	^\d{1,4}$

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
Exam series value is in scope of the return	Fail and rejected
‘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
AwardingOrganisation is valid acronym	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. Changed the order of the first three fields to align with other data collections.
29/08/2025	Added a new field: ‘ No. of Modified 36 point bold papers granted’

Contacts

For all queries or feedback 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