Guidance

TQ Assessment Timetable: guide to the data submission process

Published 10 September 2025

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 fulfill our responsibility as a government department.

What data will be collected?

Data should relate to assessment dates for all Technical Qualifications (TQs) within T levels for students in England.

Qualifications in scope

The following qualification types are in scope of this collection:

• Technical Qualifications (TQs) within T Levels

Countries in scope

Data should be included for all assessments taken by students in centres in:

• England only

Time period in scope

Data for the current, full academic year (1 September to 31 August).

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. Submit data for all subcomponents in each pathway for every qualification.
4. AssessmentEndDate only applies to subcomponents that have an assessment. window. For all other subcomponents, re-enter the same value as for AssessmentStartDate.
5. For subcomponents comprising of tasks within an assessment window, AssessmentStartDate should be the start date of the first task and AssessmentEndDate the end date of the last task. You do not need to submit the start and end dates for each individual task within the subcomponent.
6. AssessmentSession applies to Core Exams only. Value ‘-2’ should be entered for subcomponents that have an assessment window.
7. AssessmentCode and AssessmentTitle is required for Core Exams only. Value -2 should be entered for other subcomponents.

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])$
AcademicYear	The academic year which this data submission relates to (defined as 1 September to 31 August) For example, “2025-2026”	2	The academic year in the following format: start year (4 digits), a dash, end year (4 digits) Format accepted yyyy-yyyy	^(20)\d\d[-](20)\d\d$
AssessmentSeries	Assessment series data relates to, for example June 2025	3	Full month name and year of Assessment series, for example June 2025	^(June|November) \d{4}$
AwardingOrganisation	Awarding organisation acronym as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated organisations	4	1 to 100 characters accepted	^.{1,100}$
QualificationNumber	Unique identifier for the TQ as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated qualifications	5	Valid Qualification Number. 1 to 10 characters accepted	^.{1,10}$
QualificationTitle	Name of the TQ as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated qualifications	6	1 to 1,000 characters accepted	^.{1,1000}$
Route	Name of the TQ route	7	Valid TQ route name	Accepted values as per Skills England’s occupational maps: Occupational Maps: Skills England
Pathway	Name of the TQ pathway	8	Valid TQ Pathway name	Accepted values as per Skills England’s occupational maps: Occupational Maps: Skills England
ComponentCode	Unique identifier for the component (assigned by the awarding organisation) Note: This should be unique to the specific component and be consistent with other TQ data submissions	9	1 to 10 characters	^.{1,10}$
SubComponentType	TQ sub-component	10	Accepted Values: Core Exam Core Project Occupational Specialism	^(Core Exam\|Core Project\|Occupational Specialism)$
AssessmentCode	Unique identifier for the assessment (assigned by the awarding organisation). Note 1: This is only required for core exam assessments. Enter -2 for other subcomponents Note 2: This should be unique to the specific assessment and be consistent with other TQ data submissions	11	1 to 10 characters	^.{1,10}$
AssessmentTitle	AO-assigned name for the assessment. Note: This is only required for core exam assessments. Enter -2 for other subcomponents	12	String value between 1 and 300 characters	^.{1,300}$
AssessmentStartDate	Date of the first assessment for the specified subcomponent	13	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])$
AssessmentEndDate	Date of the last assessment for the specified subcomponent Repeat the start date value for assessments which are only taken one day	14	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])$
AssessmentSession	To indicate if the assessment is taken in the morning or afternoon session if applicable	15	Accepted values: AM or PM Note: enter -2 for subcomponents that have an assessment window	^(AM|PM|-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
‘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 value is a valid awarding organisation acronym from Ofqual register	Fail and rejected
QualificationNumber value is a valid qualification number from Ofqual register	Fail and rejected