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Exams Officers page |  Development Hub | Support portal

As always, our customer support portal offers a wide range of articles to support you in your day to day activities. As we begin to look ahead to the summer exam period, you may find our EO Support Spring & Summer essential information article useful

• Key Dates
•  NEW  Making your assessment entries
•  NEW  VQ Learner Tracker
• Pearson Onscreen Platform software update
• Exams Officer training – new on-demand modules and webinar
•  NEW  Booking Functional Skills On Demand (FSOD) collections
•  NEW  Tech Awards (2022)

• Key Dates
•  NEW  GCSE, AS and A Level Geography updates

•  NEW  Question paper dispatch update | summer 2024
•  NEW  Timetable variations
•  NEW  Stationary and materials spreadsheet | summer 2024
• Modified papers | summer 2024
• Models for use with summer 2024 Mathematics modified papers
• Exams Officer training survey
• JCQ Updated AI guidance
• Instructions for Conducting Examinations
• Multi Factor Authentication | Smartphone requirements
• Customer Support Portal
• Social media | Pearson Exams Officer Support

BTEC Firsts and Nationals: 22 March – deadline to make entries for external assessment

Remember: For BTEC Tech Awards entries also need to be made for internally assessed components, as these are externally moderated.

It’s important to make any of your outstanding entries as soon as possible so that learners stay on track to receive an overall qualification result in August. Where learners are no longer expecting an overall qualification result, you should change their estimated completion date to reflect a new completion date after August 2024.

Read more about withdrawing registrations

We will be contacting all colleges and schools where entries are outstanding to offer support to complete your entries. Although if you do need any help you should contact us immediately through the Pearson support portal. 

The VQ learner tracker is a new module on our Pearson Progress platform which provides a single view of your vocational registrations. You will be able to use this to track your learner registrations, and ensure we have all the information we need to deliver on time results in August 2024.

We’ll be adding new features throughout the year, and right now you’ll be able to use the VQ learner tracker to identify learners who still need an assessment entry making to receive an overall qualification result in August.

How can I access the tracker?

Exams Officers, assistants and managers will have received an invite to their email address that they can use to access the VQ learner tracker. To log in, you should use your Edexcel Online username and password. Exams staff can also log in directly at:

We’ll be inviting other centre roles to access the VQ learner tracker later in the year.

Read our VQ learner tracker getting started guide

Find out more

If you’d like to find out more about the VQ learner tracker, including how to identify missing entries, and what we have planned in new features over the next few months, watch our VQ learner tracker webinar. (You’ll need your Edexcel Online username and password to access).

We have released a new version of our Onscreen Testing Platform (POP).

The new version numbers are:

The latest module in our BTEC Exams Officer training series is now available on the Pearson Development Hub.

From April 2 centres will no longer be able to book ad-hoc collections directly from the FSOD replacement labels site

You will still be able to generate replacement labels if needed as normal here, but will need to book collections here:

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

Last week we issued BTEC Tech Awards results for the externally assessed terminal component for the first time. We’ve been in touch with all centres who received results to explain the options available to you once you’ve received your results, including making a certification claim through submitting a cash-in and the terminal rule.

Read our email about submitting a cash-in and the terminal rule

Watch our on-demand webinar about results and certification

You can also read more about understanding your results, accessing moderator reports and post results services in our February Tech Award newsletter. 

Making certification claims | Cash-ins

You can make certification claims for learners that completed their terminal external assessment in January and have completed all their internally assessed components. You should do this on Edexcel Online by 18 April, following our guide to submitting a cash-in.

If you’re unsure whether you should submit a certificate claim, you can follow this decision tree infographic. Remember, if learners sat their terminal external assessment in January and are resitting internal components in summer, they will also need to resit the external assessment to fulfil the terminal assessment requirement.

Submission deadline move to 15 May

We were also in touch earlier this month to let you know that we are moving the submission deadline for the upload of learner work for BTEC Tech Awards in the summer series to 15 May 2024. This change applies to internally assessed components for all Tech Awards and the externally assessed components in creative subjects. This 15 May submission deadline will remain in place for all May/June assessment series going forward.

This revised deadline will give you two more weeks to run, mark and upload internal assessments, and gives you extra time to upload work for external assessments in the creative subjects.

Read more about the submission deadline change

We sent our monthly BTEC Tech Awards newsletter last week, featuring details on the January series, moderator reports, where to access PSAs and external assessment materials for May/June, and much more.

Read February's BTEC Tech Awards (2022) newsletter. 

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

Our BTEC Tech Awards 2022 support index is designed to support you over the academic year. 

The index contains direct links on support covering the following topics:

We'll add to this support throughout the year, so please bookmark the page to see our latest articles.

We have recently provided 2 updates on the delivery of assessment for Geography subjects.

Looking ahead to the summer series, here’s an update on when you will start receiving exam materials.

You can expect to start receiving your oral materials for your language oral exams and Pre-Release Material for GCE Music (9MU0/02) from 19 March onwards.

You can expect to start receiving standard and modified question papers from the following dates: 

You will be able to track your standard question paper despatch for General Qualifications via Edexcel Online.

If you have any concerns that your centre will be closed for the Easter holidays and you will therefore be unable to take receipt of question papers, please contact us by 26 April so that we can rearrange your delivery.

Please ensure that appropriate colleagues are aware that question papers will be arriving soon and what they need to do with them. Question papers need to be carefully checked to ensure that you have received what you were expecting and that all question paper packs are in good condition. You should report any issues relating to question papers as soon as possible.

Whilst the vast majority of question paper deliveries marked for the attention of Exams Officers are made during normal centre hours, on rare occasions, a courier may attempt delivery when the main reception has closed, so papers cannot be stored securely. We encourage centres to inform staff to refuse these deliveries, and the papers will be redelivered.

Further information, guidance and tools can be found in:

Attendance registers

You can expect to start receiving attendance registers and labels from 16 April onwards.

Availability of Electronic Copies of Question Papers

Our goal is to ensure that your centre's exams run as smoothly and as stress-free for centre staff as possible. To help us achieve this goal, we would appreciate you making checks outlined below well ahead of your centre's first exam. 

If your centre requires access to electronic copies of question papers in the Summer 2024 exam series, for example if you make a very late entry or need to print onto coloured paper, they will be available to download on the Secure Download Service (SDS). This also includes audio files and transcripts for listening exams. Our recommendation is that a minimum of two members of centre staff have SDS included in their Edexcel Online (EOL) profile.

If your exam staff do not already have SDS added to their EOL profile, they will need to contact us, and be available to receive a secure call-back from our Customer Services Specialist on your centre's main telephone number. Once this call has been performed successfully, access to the SDS platform will be added to their account.

Please see the SDS support guide for further details: Secure Download Service (SDS) (pearson.com)

If you have centre exams staff without access to SDS, they should contact us as soon as possible, and well ahead of the Summer exam series so that we can update their account.

It is important that all exam staff can access SDS as we will not be able to send electronic question papers via Secure File Transfer (SFT) on the day of the exam without a secure call back to your centre’s main telephone number first. This could result in logistical challenges for your centre at a critical time in the day - with staff required to move between an exam hall and your reception/ exam office. This may result in delays, including potentially impacting the start time of the exam in question. To avoid this please make checks to your exam staff EOL profiles (and specifcally SDS) today. 

All exams are scheduled to be sat at 09:00 a.m. and 13:30 p.m. The permitted exceptions to this are detailed in sections 7 and 8 of the JCQ Instructions for Conducting Examinations.

Where a timetable variation is used, candidates must be kept under examination conditions until the end of the scheduled exam time. Centres must ensure that invigilators have been trained on supervising candidates under clash supervision arrangements. More details can be found in section 7 of the JCQ Instructions for Conducting Examinations.

Exams for AS Maths, AS Further Maths, A level Maths, A level Further Maths and A level Statistics must not be moved to an earlier session – more information can be found in the JCQ guidance here. 

The updated version for summer 2024 can be found here.

The deadline for ordering modified papers for the summer 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.

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.

We are currently reviewing our onboarding process for new Exams Officers, as well as how we support those more established within the role.

To assist with this, we are currently gathering insights from Exams Officers on the average time in post and training availability / options for newer members of the centre staff that work with us. This is also an opportunity to have your say and share any feedback you may wish to provide on the training we currently offer.
We would appreciate your assistance by completing a short survey (8 questions) which should only take a few minutes to complete. You can complete this by scanning the QR code below, or of you would prefer you can access the form using this link.

On 2 February the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ) published their updated JCQ guidance on AI Use in Assessments.

The guidance is designed to help students and teachers to complete NEAs, coursework and other internal assessments successfully, giving students the chance to demonstrate skills which cannot be assessed in exams.

Please do share the latest version of the guidance with senior leaders, teachers and assessors in your school or college. This guidance should inform school policies on AI use, so schools and colleges can provide staff and students with clear information.

A summary of the key updates is available on the JCQ website. They've also produced a poster for students on the use of AI and assessments and an information sheet for teachers along with PowerPoint presentations for teachers and students.

Read all the information on JCQ blog and download the updated guidance and support materials.

If you are running examinations in 2024, 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.