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6 December 2023

Dear Colleague,

As you begin to prepare for the January exam session, we are getting in touch to give you some updates on exam paper despatch and changes to how you access electronic exam materials.

We have changed the release time of electronic question papers via Secure File Transfer and the BTEC assessment download web page from 90 to 45 minutes before the published start time.

We take the security of our question papers very seriously and this change is part of our continuous review of security protocols. We understand this could provide additional challenges, and we have considered the impact of these changes very carefully. We greatly appreciate the support we receive from you and other exams officers.

If you need additional time to print and collate question papers, JCQ regulations permit centres to vary the published start time of the exam by 30 minutes to allow for exam preparation so please consider rescheduling your exam start times if you need to.

You can expect to receive standard and modified question papers for the BTEC January series from Tuesday 5 December. Attendance registers and labels will be despatched from Monday 4 December. If you need any tracking information, you can contact us through the Pearson support portal.

The yellow label service will be in place for this series for centres in England to return completed exam scripts.

As we’ve moved away from SharePoint for the upload of learner material, we will no longer be able to provide learner place card templates for BTEC external assessments. You can use the entry confirmation reports function on Edexcel Online to generate your own if you would still like to use them.

Follow the instructions in our BTEC entry confirmation reports support article. 

Electronic copies of BTEC Tech award (2022) exam papers, including modified papers, will be made available through the Secure Download Service from January 2024. The pre-release materials (PSAs) are available to download as normal from the BTEC subject page. The following units will be available:

Secure Download Service (SDS) is only for BTEC Tech Award (2022). BTEC Level 2 Firsts and Level 3 Nationals will be available as normal on the BTEC assessment download page.

If you don’t already have access to SDS, you should contact our Customer Services team through the Pearson support portal so they can grant access to your Edexcel Online profile.

You will receive your attendance registers for the BTEC Tech Award (2022) January 2024 series separately to our main BTEC despatch. The registers will look slightly different to other BTEC registers, but the process remains the same. Please follow the instructions on the register to complete and return to us with scripts as you would normally.

Where you receive yellow pre-paid Parcelforce labels, these will be attached to your register and not loose. Centres outside of England will receive a white address label attached to your register. This should be applied to the pack in which you return your scripts alongside the label provided by your courier. Centres outside of England are not covered by the yellow label service, so will need to arrange their own courier to return scripts.

If you have any questions about the January 2024 exam series, please contact us through the Pearson support portal.

Kind regards,

Louise Denman

Head of Customer Planning, Print and Logistics