Joint Council for

Qualifications

E-Newsletter

16 December 2022

Summer 2023 contingency days

The awarding bodies have collectively agreed a contingency day for several years now which is always scheduled at the end of the GCSE, GCE AS and A-level exam timetables.

The contingency day is in the event of national or significant local disruption to exams in the United Kingdom, being part of the awarding bodies’ standard contingency planning for exams.

Following the Covid-19 pandemic, further resilience was needed within the exam timetables. A single contingency day was not felt to be sufficient if a national event or incident had a significant effect on the exam timetable. For example, summer exams could be affected by extremely high temperatures.

For the June 2023 exams, the awarding bodies have therefore introduced two additional half-day contingency sessions. These are on Thursday 8 June 2023 and Thursday 15 June 2023. The standard contingency day remains at the end of the timetable being scheduled on Wednesday 28 June 2023.

Schools and colleges should ensure candidates and parents are aware of the contingency arrangements on these three days. They should consider the contingency day of Wednesday 28 June 2023 when making their plans for the summer. Candidates should be encouraged to remain available until Wednesday 28 June 2023 should examinations need to be rescheduled.

UCAS predicted grades and Grade Boundaries

Awarding bodies recognise the important role that teachers play in predicting grades for their students’ UCAS applications and appreciate how challenging this can be.

Ofqual's announcement on 29 September, recommends teachers to use pre-pandemic grading standards as the basis of predicting students’ grades in 2023.

Where you are using evidence from past papers from Autumn 2020, 2021 and Summer 2022 to create UCAS predicted grades, please be aware that the published grade boundaries for these exams reflect the grading arrangements in place during the pandemic. As such, these boundaries may be lower than those using the pre-pandemic standards.

For further information on the latest Ofqual guidance, please read Dr Jo Saxton, Ofqual Chief Regulator’s latest blog here.

Invigilator recruitment

To support the recruitment of invigilators ahead of the summer 2023 exams, the National Association of Examinations Officers (NAEO), in partnership with the Exams Office, have launched the Exams Recruitment & Vacancy Map.

This tool is free to use. It provides centres with an opportunity to advertise their invigilator vacancies (as well as other exams and data related posts).

More information can be found on the NAEO website.

Department for Education Update: Process to amend qualifications currently counting for 2024

The moratorium that has been in place since the 2020 performance table lists were published in 2018 means that no new vocational or technical qualifications can be added to the list of 16-18 qualifications that are included within performance measures.

Ahead of publishing the list of Technical Certificates, Tech Levels or Applied General qualifications that will be included within performance measures for 2025, the department is opening its usual annual process for awarding organisations to submit proposed amendments to their 16-18 Technical and Applied qualifications that are already approved for inclusion within the 2024 performance measures, for example where this is necessary to update content to reflect legislative change.

This amendment process starts on 25 November 2022 and closes on 13 January 2023.

The department emailed awarding organisations with vocational and technical qualifications counting for the 2024 performance measures on 25 November 2022 with details of the amendments allowed, as well as the submission process and links through to the guidance and where to direct enquiries.

Private Candidates

The JCQ Private Candidate database for centres willing to accept private candidates has now been updated.

This searchable database can be accessed on the JCQ Private Candidates page.

Please be aware that centres may still accept private candidates even if they are not listed on the JCQ website. Appearing on the list is not a prerequisite for supporting private candidates.

Useful links

We'd like to draw your attention to the latest documents that have been published on the JCQ website:

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