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Dear Colleague,

Although the summer break may already feel a distant memory, we hope your students are adjusting well in the new academic year. This newsletter includes updated guides and resources to help you start the academic year smoothly.

If you have any questions about quality assurance, please contact the team via live chat or the Pearson Support Portal. If you're not already a member, join our QN Community where we share the latest information, and you can network with other BTEC centres. Don't forget you can book a Teams call with us if you have any questions.

We have made a change to the rules for internal assessment in terms of the resubmission opportunities available to students. Please see the Centre Guide to Internal Assessment for further information, but students are now able to have a resubmission opportunity if plagiarism and/or the misuse of AI has been detected. We recognise that this is a significant change, and you may wish to update your internal policies and procedures in line with this update.

It’s important to register your students on time to keep your quality assurance running smoothly. Here are the key deadlines to keep in mind:

For other programmes that enrol learners at any time other than September/October e.g. roll-on roll-off, competence based, you must register students within six weeks of enrolment at the centre.

We’ll launch the annual Edexcel Online account confirmation in mid-September, as part of our ongoing duty to maintain centre and learner data security.

Your centre’s exams officer will need to work with your head of centre to review your centre’s Edexcel Online accounts. Your head of centre will then need to complete the declaration and accept our terms and conditions by 28 October.

While this isn’t something you’ll have access to as quality nominee (unless you also have an exams or head of centre role), you may need to support your exams officer and head of centre with this activity.

It’s important that you have an identified lead internal verifier (lead IV) for each programme from the following qualification suites. Lead IVs don’t need to register on Edexcel Online for BTEC Level 2 Firsts or Level 3 Nationals programmes. However, team standardisation must still take place; you can access centre standardisation materials on the subject-specific pages, under course materials.

Team standardisation must take place prior to any formal assessment taking place.

Please make sure your lead IVs read the BTEC Centre Guide for the Lead Internal Verifier 2025–2026 and watch the updated guide video:

Lead IVs for Functional Skills English Levels 1 and 2 need to register on Edexcel Online and complete the annual standardisation activity. This is a rolling process each month, so you’ll receive notification of successful accreditation in the first few days of the month following the completion of the activity.

The centre check-in activity will continue for 2025–26 and we look forward to working with centres in scope this year.

Download the BTEC Centre Guide to Quality Assurance for more information on the scope of this activity. We’ll have a bitesize video explaining it too, coming soon.

We’ll email you this month if you’re in scope, and your VQAM will contact you shortly afterwards. Our role in this activity is supportive; we want you to feel confident that you have everything in place that will lead to the safe certification of your students. We've designed these check-ins so you receive support early and continuously rather than just during a specific window.

Please make sure your staff have seen the range of support available in terms of centre guides and on-demand CPD, all of which will help in planning for a successful year. Key themes to stress to staff include: 

In our annual review of templates, we've updated the resubmission section of the assessment record template and IV of assessment decisions template to make sure it captures the learner registration number. This change will help you with accurate tracking and verification. Please make sure that your teams are using the most up-to-date versions of both documents.

A new AI Essentials course is now available on ActiveHub, designed to help give your students a foundational understanding of the opportunities and risks of artificial intelligence. Available as a 12-month site licence, this course can be allocated to any number of students at one centre within that timeframe.

The September to December live events schedule is now available for the Roles and Responsibilities of the Quality Nominee and Roles and Responsibilities of the Lead IV. We’d recommend these sessions for any staff new to the role or those of you who want a refresher.

For those QNs that were unable to make it to the in-person networks in the summer, we have catch up live events that may be more suitable along with the brand-new event for the quality assurance of AAQs.

We also have a YouTube channel with a range of videos covering quality assurance processes. Look out for An Introduction to the Centre Check-in Activity, which will be an overview of this process and how it fits in the quality assurance model.

Want dedicated support with internal assessment and verification? Our updated on-demand CPD offer covers BTEC Entry Level/Level 1 Introductory through to Level 3 qualifications. Each package includes a short video, an activity to consolidate understanding, the answers, and a PDF copy of the video presentation.

All guides for ESOL, Entry Level and Level 1 / 2 English Functional Skills are being uploaded to the Funcitonal Skills quality assurance page. Bookmark this page to check back for the current-year documents as they become available.

You can find all key documents, including the Centre Guide for Higher National Quality Assurance and Assessment, on the BTEC Higher Nationals quality assurance page.

All guides for work-based learning will be available soon on the work-based learning quality assurance page. Please bookmark this page to check back for the current-year documents as they become available.

The BTEC Centre Guide to the Academic Management Review and Centre Evidence Guide will be available soon.

There are two main changes that you need to be aware of this year:

Kind regards,

Helen, Bill, Kieran, Liz & Sally
Vocational Quality Assurance Managers