Neil Hateley, Creative iMedia Subject Advisor

We want to support your marking of non-examined assessment (NEA). In this blog I’d like to highlight a few resources and share some feedback from our moderator team which, in exchange for a few minutes of your personal development time, should help you to mark NEA set assignments successfully.

Support resources

We encourage centres to make use of our online training for assessors, which is available at train.ocr.org.uk. If you’ve already registered, you can add additional learning modules to your account. If you haven’t used the platform before, you can register easily in a couple of minutes. The training packages take between 30 and 90 minutes to complete, depending on the module. You can complete individual sections and return to the training later. 

The module for Creative iMedia gives guidance on delivery and assessment of the course, including examples of how to complete best fit marking using examples based on the R082 mandatory unit as well as the R084 and R085 optional units. The training also covers standardisation and moderation procedures, and there are tips on where to find support materials and documentation. Also relevant to centres delivering Creative iMedia is the introductory module, “Building your Confidence in Internal Assessment”. 

We have produced a number of documents to support the effective delivery of the qualifications, including the marking of NEA. Our videos on demystifying the assessment are available as teacher guides for most of the units, providing supporting commentary on evidencing criteria within the set assignments. The referencing and acceptable levels of guidance document, together with its supporting videos for teachers and students, supplement the guidance already included in the set assignments. 

Please note that the information provided in these documents and videos is still valid for all future moderated submissions and that adaptations for Covid 19 do not negate this. 

We also have a support page for 2021/22 specific updates. This includes published guidance on how Cambridge Nationals will be awarded in 2021/22 - this guidance is at suite level. There is also guidance covering the process of calculating assessed grades.

Centre assessment standards scrutiny (CASS)

Since September 2021, all awarding organisations are required by Ofqual to follow the same standard of Centre Assessment Standards Scrutiny (CASS). 

As an existing OCR centre, you will probably notice very little change as many of these new standards are already part of our current processes. However, the practical implications of these changes are significant. 

Problems such as inconsistent marking are now more likely to result in the centre needing to re-mark the work of all affected students, to ensure no student is disadvantaged (or advantaged) by the moderation process. Once the sample is re-marked, the moderator then needs to moderate the sample for a second time. This risks delaying the release of results for your students.

Feedback from our moderator team

• When you are filling in your unit recording sheet (URS) during marking, please indicate on the URS the learning outcomes where any unit adaptations have been used, including where work has been completed at home.
  Annotating the URS identifies to the moderator, and to us, the conditions the work was completed under. This was a requirement when completing work away from the centre. We have a reminder of this guidance on our website. 
• A key part of the marking process is that the assessment of student’s work is based on the evidence presented by the student. Our moderators are reporting a higher number of submissions where the student’s portfolio is not presented accurately marked. Whilst this is generally evidenced by over marking of a student’s performance at the higher end, there are also significant instances of under marking at the lower end.
  The accuracy of NEA marking has been highlighted recently in communications from JCQ. They have reminded centres that they should be marking all NEA using the published mark schemes, as you would have done before the pandemic disruption.
  It is vital that marking is a true reflection of the evidence submitted by the student and not a mark reflecting the grade the assessor expects the student to achieve. This mark must be based on applying the best fit approach and not the highest mark for the strongest piece of evidence within a strand. 
• We’ve also provided useful guidance on the use of witness statements. This points out that witness statements should complement, but not replace, student work. They may assist the support for marks in elements LO1, LO2 and LO4, but not be a replacement for any of the practical tasks, or the final products for LO3. Remember, it’s the student’s own product for the unit that provides the only valid form of evidence. 
• When presenting students’ work for all units, the file/folder structure forms part of the assessment in LO3. The ability for this to be evidenced during moderation is vital to supporting an appropriate mark.
  Moderators have seen multiple instances where every sub-folder is zipped and then included with root level files within another zip folder, or alternatively the contents of sub-folders have been uploaded individually to the folder of student work. Consequently, the folder structure is lost, and the end product may not work as intended.
  Submitting students work using a compressed archive file, ZIP or similar, is the preferred method of submission for these units. However, please check and verify that the chosen structure of student’s work is preserved during this process and that it maintains the functionality of the final product. If the centre assessor needs to change the student’s organisation of files, this should be explained in the URS and a suitable mark credited for what the student did for themselves. 
• As we approach the summer 2022 series, we need to be mindful that for many centres, the June 2022 submission will be the only formally and fully assessed coursework element in many students’ portfolios. This will therefore form an important basis for aggregated final grades together with TAG grade submissions from previous series.

The purpose of all the information and the reminders above is to help you. If you have any further questions, please contact support@ocr.org.uk or call our customer support centre on 01223 553998, and if necessary, ask to speak to a subject advisor.

Stay connected

If you have any questions, you can email us at support@ocr.org.uk, call us on 01223 553998 or tweet us @OCR_ICT. You can also sign up to subject updates and and receive information about resources and support.

About the author

Neil joined OCR in January 2020, bringing with him a broad swathe of experience from the further education sector and industry. He has completed 17 years in both small and large further education establishments, delivering vocational and industry certified training programs. Neil’s previous employment experience included systems support for control systems, as well as electronic and electromechanical development engineering work. 

Neil has a first degree in Applied Physics from Hull University, and post graduate qualifications in Business Computing from The University of Northampton. 

Outside work, Neil is a keen gardener and beekeeper, he has a young family and various pets most of which he looks after on behalf of his daughter. One day he may even get around to getting his motorbike out of the shed again.