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Exams Officers page | January '24 support | Development Hub | Support portal

We hope you've enjoyed a well-earned rest over the winter break. 

• Key dates
•  NEW   Special Consideration Service- BTEC Firsts and Nationals
•  NEW   BTEC Deletions
•  NEW   Support for the January exam series
•  NEW   Exams officer training – new on-demand module and webinars
• Accessing your BTEC question papers electronically
• BTEC question paper dispatch | January & February 2024
• Review your estimated completion dates ahead of the cohort confirmation checkpoint deadline
• Learner Work Transfer for BTEC - First and Nationals
• BTEC Tech Awards (2022)

• Key dates
•  NEW  November 2023 GCSE | Results
•  NEW  Summer 2025 provisional timetables
• Edexcel Award | January Series

•  NEW   Parcelforce yellow label service
• Modified Papers - January and summer 2024
• Instructions for Conducting Examinations
• Multi Factor Authentication | Smartphone requirements
• Customer Support Portal
• Social media | Pearson Exams Officer Support

The Special Consideration Service is your new online tool to submit and track your special consideration requests for BTEC First and National qualifications. This service will be opening in early January, which means you will no longer complete any paper JCQ Form 10 applications.

You’ll need an Edexcel Online account that has the basic access and special consideration boxes ticked. If you don’t have access to this, you can contact us and we will add this on for you.

You’ll now be able to track the receipt and processing of your special consideration applications for BTEC Firsts and Nationals. This is our first phase in improving and streamlining how you submit special consideration requests. You will submit all special consideration requests for general and vocational qualifications through the Special Consideration Service in summer 2024.

We’ll be in touch when the new service opens, and in the meantime you can find out more in our latest support article.

Read our guide to using the Special Consideration Service 

The deadline to delete BTEC registrations made from September 2023 and receive a refund for the registration fees is 31 January 2024.  

Watch our guidance video for step-by-step instructions on how to process BTEC deletions on Edexcel Online. 

The January exam series is under way, so make sure you know everything you need to have a successful series.

Familiarise yourself with the BTEC Instructions for Conducting External Assessments (ICEA).

Explore our exam administration support, including: 

The latest module in our BTEC exams officer training series has been released on the Pearson Development Hub. Our newest modules are BTEC Bitesize Module 4: BTEC Amendments (2023/24) which takes you through how to amend learner details on a BTEC registration, how to process transfers and deletions, how to amend estimated completion dates, external assessment bookings and onscreen tests and BTEC Bitesize Module 5: Modified Papers (2023/24) which explains what a modified paper is and how to make an application for modified papers on PAAO. It will also show you where you can find key dates and deadlines and how to access past papers in a modified format.

You can Access training through the Pearson Development Hub please bookmark this as all future modules will also be be made available here

In December 2023 we emailed Exams Officers about a change to when centres can access electronic copies of question papers.

This has changed from 90 minutes to 45 minutes prior to the published exam start time, meaning papers can now be accessed via Secure download Service(SDS) (BTEC Tech Award (2022) only), Secure File Transfer (SFT) or our BTEC assessment download web page (Papers that are provided as 'secure download') from the following times;

You can read this full update here

You should have now received standard and modified question papers and attendance registers for the BTEC January series.

The Yellow Label Service will be in place for this series for centres in England to return scripts.

You can expect to start receiving question papers for the February series from Monday 8 January with attendance registers, labels and learner cards from 18 January.

If you require tracking information, please contact us via the customer support portal. 

Last month, we were in touch with colleges, schools and training providers to share information on the upcoming cohort confirmation checkpoint deadline on 9 February.

Read the latest communication about the cohort confirmation checkpoint

We will be asking your head of centre, or someone who has been authorised to act on their behalf, to sign a confirmation to declare that all estimated completion dates are accurate for all your BTEC registrations. This means we will have an accurate shared view of all learners who are expecting an overall qualification result in August. We can track these learners through the year and provide detailed learner insights so we can work in partnership with you to provide on-time results.  

We’ll be in touch in January when the cohort confirmation declaration is open for completion, and we’ll also be sharing more information on how you can provide estimated completion dates for BTEC Tech Awards (2022) and T Levels.

Read more about maintaining estimated completion dates 

BTEC Firsts and Nationals

Learner Work Transfer (LWT) is now open for you to upload learners’ work for some BTEC Firsts and Nationals throughout the January 2024 external assessment series. You are no longer required to upload learner work to SharePoint.

The submission deadlines vary by unit and are detailed in our BTEC timetables; you should submit learners’ work before the end of each unit’s submission window. You can find a full list of the BTEC units using LWT in our BTEC External Assessments: LWT Guidance support article.

We will work in partnership with you to ensure you are able to upload all your learner work and we receive it.

We have a wealth of support available to help you navigate LWT with confidence, including a short on-demand e-learning module and a recorded webinar: 

There is subject-specific guidance for uploading learner work to LWT in each unit’s administrative support guide (ASG). You can find each subject’s ASGs on the qualification course materials page, under external assessments. 

We sent our first monthly BTEC Tech Awards newsletter at the end of last term, featuring details on the terminal external assessment rule, how to claim certification for your learners, the current training available and more.

Read December’s BTEC Tech Awards (2022) newsletter. 

If you or any colleagues would like to receive these updates, sign up to the mailing list.

This week sees the release of results for November 2023 GCSE Maths and English Language resit examinations. 

Please refer to our most common customer support articles for guidance

For anything else results related please contact us via the customer support portal

Summer 2025 Provisional timetables

We will be publishing our provisional timetables for summer 2025 on Monday 22 January as agreed by JCQ and all other awarding bodies.

The consultation window will run from Monday 22 January to Friday 23 February.

The provisional timetables for November 2024 International GCSE and January 2025 International A Level and Edexcel Awards were made available on Monday 18 December. 

The consultation window for these closes on Monday 15 January.

All of the above provisional timetables are available on our website.

Please send any comments to timetables@pearson.com

In a previous version of this bulletin, we may have incorrectly indicated that this qualification is included the DfE Yellow Label Service. This is not the case. Please accept our apologies for this error. 

Edexcel Award qualifications require you to use a white label. Please refer to our support article Parcelforce Labels: Replacing Labels for Exam Papers for additional guidance.

You can no longer book ad-hoc collections directly from the Parcelforce replacement labels site for BTEC or General qualifications. 

You can still generate replacement labels as normal here but will need to book collections on the link below. 

https://collections.parcelforce.net/dfe  

or by calling the Parcelforce Worldwide examinations helpdesk on 0344 561 7998.

The deadline for ordering modified papers for the January 2024 exam series has now passed.

If you were unable to meet the deadline, please place your late order on AAO/PAAO as a matter of urgency and then contact us by way of email on additional_requirements@pearson.com, quoting your order number and centre number. We will then be able to advise you if it will be possible to supply a modified paper.

Modified papers for the summer 2024 exam series are now available to order.

The deadline for ordering modified papers for the summer 2024 exams is the 31 January 2024. Please ensure you place any orders for modified papers as soon as possible to avoid the risk of us being unable to fulfil your request.

Please be aware the deadlines for ordering modified papers are as follows:

These do not change each year. 

Please be aware that we no longer automatically supply 3D models with the modified large print Maths papers.

Please note that these will still come as standard with all orders for UEB Grade 1 and Grade 2 braille. You do not need to order these if your candidate uses braille. 

If your centre has placed an order for modified large print papers for Maths, please complete this form to order your candidate 3D models.

Failure to respond will result in no models being sent to your centre.

If you require any further information regarding this, please contact the Modified Formats Team at additional_requirements@pearson.com.

For further information on modified papers, access to past modified papers and answers to FAQs, please go to the modified formats page on our website.

If you are running examinations in the January 2024 series, it is important for you to stay up to date with the official exam regulations.

The JCQ have published the 2023/24 version of their Instructions for Conducting Examinations (ICE) document, which you can download from their website or from our support article collecting all regulatory documents, including the JCQ ICE, BTEC ICEA and general regulations.

We want to ensure you have all the help and support you need at your fingertips; that’s why we’ve got a library of support articles hosted on our Customer Support Portal. Each article contains answers, detailed information, step-by-step guides, instructional videos, and general advice. Articles require no special access, are easily searchable by keywords in their title, and are available 24/7, 365 days a year. And for good measure, we also have the portal user guide.

Take a look at our short video that explains more about our support portal, the information you can find and the further benefits it provides. 

Check out the Pearson Support Portal.

Don't forget we have a dedicated Pearson Exams Officer Support page on Facebook. This provides you with a quick and convenient way to stay up to date with our latest news and live updates from the team.

Important and informative announcements will be posted on the page daily and messages will be monitored 8am to 5pm, Monday to Friday by Charlie, Emma and Seren; our dedicated Social Media Team. Message them with for help with your queries throughout your working day.