Teacher assessment moderation: standardisation and training process
Information for local authorities on training and standardisation for moderators of key stages 2 (KS2) English writing.
What is standardisation?
Standardisation gives schools the assurance that local authorities’ moderation teams have the required knowledge to moderate KS2 English writing teacher assessments.
It ensures:
- teacher assessment and its moderation across England is consistent and accurate
- that local authorities’ moderators for the academic year 2026 to 2027 are familiar with the KS2 English writing framework
Each year, local authorities are required to moderate at least 25% of maintained schools and 25% of academies and participating independent schools that have opted into the local authority’s external KS2 moderation process.
All standardisation activity takes place on the National Curriculum Assessments Portal (NCA Portal). This includes:
- accessing standardisation training materials
- completing standardisation exercises
- receiving standardisation results and ‘approval to moderate’ certificates
- accessing standardisation exercise commentaries
Approval to moderate
All moderators must pass a standardisation exercise to gain the Standards and Testing Agency’s (STA) approval to moderate in the academic year 2026 to 2027.
Moderators can choose from 3 standardisation exercises. They may attempt up to 2 exercises and must successfully complete 1 exercise to gain approval to moderate.
Accessing the NCA Portal
Existing local authority account managers should ensure that all local authority staff with responsibilities relating to primary assessment have the correct access to the NCA Portal.
Moderation managers should ensure that all moderators who will participate in standardisation exercises during the academic year 2026 to 2027 have access to the NCA Portal at the appropriate time. Moderation managers should delete all user accounts for moderators who no longer require access to the NCA Portal.
Full instructions on how to access the portal, assign roles, view permissions and manage user accounts are detailed in the guidance on how to access the NCA Portal.
Please note that users whose passwords are more than 365 days old will be required to update them.
Completing an exercise on the NCA Portal
Each standardisation exercise will be available for completion on the NCA Portal during a specific period.
| Date | Exercise |
|---|---|
| Monday 2 November to Friday 13 November 2026 | Standardisation exercise 1 |
| Monday 11 January to Friday 22 January 2027 | Standardisation exercise 2 |
| Monday 8 February to Friday 26 February 2027 | Standardisation exercise 3 |
When each exercise becomes available on the NCA Portal, registered moderators will be automatically notified via email.
The standardisation exercises are now available online. However, local authorities should continue their usual practices. This means moderation managers are responsible for:
- co-ordinating moderator participation in an exercise according to local authority arrangements
- ensuring that moderators access and complete the exercises individually, under controlled conditions at a date and time the local authority specifies
Moderation managers and moderators can access the standardisation exercises by logging into the NCA Portal and navigating to the ‘Standardisation’ page.
To complete a standardisation exercise on the NCA Portal, moderators should:
- access the exercise at a specific time and in a suitable monitored environment as instructed by their moderation manager
- start the exercise and navigate through the pupil scripts on screen
- award a standard of attainment for each pupil collection via the drop-down list
- submit their answers to complete the exercise and send for automatic marking
The system will track exercise attempts to ensure that no moderator can complete more than 2 exercises.
The standardisation exercise materials will also be available to preview and download from the NCA Portal should local authorities wish to carry out paper-based standardisation offline. If local authorities take this approach, they should ensure individual moderators provide their responses for each pupil collection within the exercise on the NCA Portal. Otherwise, they will not receive their results or the ‘approval to moderate’ certificate.
Release of exercise commentaries and results
Standardisation exercise attempts will be automatically marked against STA’s approved judgements.
There are 3 potential result outcomes which will be communicated to moderators via automatic email from the NCA Portal.
| Result | Description |
|---|---|
| Successful | No further exercises required – approved to moderate for the academic year 2026 to 2027, moderator can download approval certificate from the NCA Portal |
| Unsuccessful | One more attempt available – moderator was unsuccessful but can complete one further exercise on the NCA Portal |
| Unsuccessful | No further attempts allowed – moderator was unsuccessful in two exercises |
The exercise results and commentaries will be released on a phased basis across five days:
- on the Monday after each exercise window closes, moderation managers can access the results and commentaries — this gives them enough time to discuss outcomes with moderators before the system releases the results
- on the Wednesday after each exercise window closes, moderators can access their results and commentaries, including the ‘approval to moderate’ certificate, if they are successful
The commentary and results release dates for each exercise can be found below within the standardisation and training timeline.
Once the standardisation exercise window opens, local authorities will be able to access a report on the NCA Portal showing moderator participation, pass and fail rates for their area. This will help local authorities confirm whether they have recruited enough moderators for the academic year 2026 to 2027.
Use of large language models
Following a pilot exercise in the academic year 2025 to 2026, standardisation exercises 2 and 3 will be developed by STA with support from large language models.
The purpose of the pilot was to explore whether large language models can help overcome ongoing challenges with standardisation exercise production, including sourcing sufficient scripts from schools and reducing associated costs. Details of the pilot were communicated to moderation managers in July 2025. As in previous years, all participating moderators will have the opportunity to provide feedback on each standardisation exercise.
STA will only use the materials developed with the assistance of large language models to evaluate moderators’ understanding of the KS2 English writing teacher assessment framework.
Moderator training
The NCA Portal provides self-guided standardisation training materials for key stage 1 (KS1) and KS2, with built-in guidance to help local authorities navigate them.
Additional training videos are available on STA’s YouTube playlist.
Examples of pupils’ work to support teachers’ assessment of English writing at the end of KS2 are available on Teacher assessment exemplification: KS2 English writing.
We will not publish any further training or exemplification materials for the academic year 2026 to 2027.
Local authorities can use the training materials to support their moderator training. We recommend that training is delivered to moderators before they complete the standardisation exercise, preferably on separate days.
Standardisation and training timeline
To add a full list of all important dates for local authorities relating to teacher assessment to your calendar, you can download the .
| Dates | Activities |
|---|---|
| Monday 2 November to Friday 13 November 2026 | Standardisation exercise 1 available to moderators on the NCA Portal for completion |
| From Monday 16 November 2026 | Report available on the NCA Portal for moderation managers to review standardisation participation rates, outcomes and approved moderators for 2026 to 2027 |
| From Monday 16 November 2026 | Standardisation exercise 1 commentaries and results available on the NCA Portal for moderation managers |
| Monday 16 November to Friday 27 November 2026 | Standardisation exercise 1 moderator feedback survey available for completion on the NCA Portal |
| Wednesday 18 November 2026 | Participating moderators receive email notification to access standardisation exercise 1 commentaries and results on the NCA Portal, including the ‘approval to moderate’ certificate, if successful |
| Monday 11 January to Friday 22 January 2027 | Standardisation exercise 2 available on the NCA Portal for completion by all moderators who did not complete or were unsuccessful in exercise 1 |
| From Monday 25 January 2027 | Standardisation exercise 2 commentaries and results available on the NCA Portal for moderation managers |
| Monday 25 January to Friday 5 February 2027 | Standardisation exercise 2 moderator feedback survey available for completion on the NCA Portal |
| Wednesday 27 January 2027 | Participating moderators receive email notification to access standardisation exercise 2 commentaries and results on the NCA Portal, including the ‘approval to moderate’ certificate, if successful |
| Monday 8 February to Friday 26 February 2027 | Standardisation exercise 3 available on the NCA Portal for completion by all moderators who did not complete or were unsuccessful in either exercise 1 or 2 |
| From Monday 1 March 2027 | Standardisation exercise 3 commentaries and results available on the NCA Portal for moderation managers |
| Monday 1 March to Friday 12 March 2027 | Standardisation exercise 3 moderator feedback survey available for completion on the NCA Portal |
| Wednesday 3 March 2027 | Participating moderators receive email notification to access standardisation exercise 3 commentaries and results on the NCA Portal, including the ‘approval to moderate’ certificate, if successful |
Contact us
If you have questions about local authority moderation or moderator training and standardisation, you can call the national curriculum assessments helpline on 0300 303 3013.
Updates to this page
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Updated for the academic year 2026 to 2027
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Removed duplication - details on how to request, set up and sign in to National Curriculum Assessments Portal (NCA Portal) accounts for moderators who require access as a school user and a local authority user are available in the full guidance on 'how to access the NCA Portal'.
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Previously, users who needed access to the National Curriculum Assessments Portal (NCA Portal) as a school user and local authority user had to set up 2 separate accounts with 2 different email addresses. This has now changed, so that school-based moderators in local authorities can use the same email address to access both accounts and receive notifications from the NCA Portal.
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Added clarification for users of the National Curriculum Assessments Portal (NCA Portal): Local authority users who also have or need school access will require 2 separate NCA Portal accounts and must use different email addresses to create and access them. Users who need access to multiple local authorities can however switch between them within one single local authority account, using the same email address.
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Added guidance on how to access the NCA Portal. Updated the downloadable calendar, which erroneously showed the dates for the previous academic year - now updated with the dates for the academic year 2025 to 2026.
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Dates and guidance updated reflecting the digital standardisation process for the 2025 to 2026 academic year.
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Updated for the academic year 2024 to 2025, including adding a downloadable calendar with important moderation dates for local authorities.
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Updated for the academic year 2023 to 2024.
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Updated for the 2022/23 academic year.
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Section -- Approval to moderate - change of wording on standardisation exercise attempts - The second paragraph, last sentence has been changed to read as follows: Following feedback we have agreed, for this year, that moderators who were unsuccessful in standardisation exercise 1 will be allowed two further attempts to complete an exercise successfully instead of one further attempt. Section -- Standardisation and training timeline -- standardisation date changes -- The closing date to complete the standardisation exercise 2 has been changed to 3 February. Section -- STA to share KS1 and KS2 to complete blank approval to moderate certificates with Las for the 2022/22 test cycle. The date has been changed to 4 April.
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The section Approval to moderate, the last paragraph has been changed to read as follows: In response to the disruption schools and LAs are facing due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, STA will continue to allow LAs to decide how they deliver the exercises. Where exercises are carried out in the same room, it is expected that all national and local restriction guidance is followed.
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Edited Approval to moderate section.
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Updated approval to moderate section to include ‘Standardisation exercises should be completed in a central location, supervised by the LA moderation manager, or strategic lead in the case that a moderation manager is completing the exercise. This is to maintain the integrity of the exercise. Moderators should complete the exercise individually, without discussing the pupil collections'.
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Added section '2021/22 moderator training material overview'.
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Updates to standardisation and training process.
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Amendment to standardisation and training timeline and the moderation training events section.
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Updated for the 2020/21 academic year.
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Changes to standardisation training event and exercise dates for the 2019/20 test cycle. Updates to allow LAs to plan for the standardisation activities.
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Updated dates to confirm when approval to moderate letters will be issued.
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First published.