GCSE, AS and A Levels
We've summarised the changes for our affected GCSE, AS and A Level qualifications, for students certificating in summer 2021.
Available to support you:
- Your guide to the changes - these documents will summarise the changes, what they mean for our specs and how students will be assessed.You can find these on your qualification page.
- Subject Advisor support videos – an outline of the changes to each qualification, initial guidance on what you’ll need to do in response, and a summary of the support that will be available.
- Other resources – where needed for individual qualifications, these additional documents will support and guide you through the changes
Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals
We’re committed to supporting everyone to deliver Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals and helping you deal with the on-going challenges in 2020-21. We shared proposals for adapting Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals with you at the end of September and we can now confirm the final unit-level changes in place to meet public health requirements.
Unit-level adaptations to make delivery easier for you
We’ve reviewed all the units in our Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals being taken this academic year so we can provide you with guidance at qualification and unit level on changes to requirements or alternative approaches to support public health guidance. These changes are designed to make units to be taken in 2020/21 possible to complete, given the constraints you are working with, and to make sure that the learning outcomes and assessment criteria can still be met. The adaptations depend on the nature of the unit but include changes to make delivery easier for you such as:
- simplifying tasks so that less equipment and fewer specialist facilities are needed
- adjusting requirements so that some activities or tasks, such as sport coaching sessions, do not need to be done as many times.
We’ve now published our guide to the changes which clearly set out the changes for each affected unit. For some units, there are no changes. Please download these from the notice that sits at the top of each qualification page.
These should be used, alongside specifications and assignments, to plan and carry out assessments.
To support you, we’re offering Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals Q&A webinars with our subject advisors.
You can also contact our Customer Support Team on support@ocr.org.uk for any questions.
January 2021 series
If you have students looking to complete Cambridge Nationals qualifications next year, we'd encourage you to submit some, or as many of your moderated units as you can, before the summer 21 series. To support this, there will be no late entry fees applied for moderated units for the January series. If you're able to complete moderated units, please continue to submit entries to us at any point up to the end of 2020.
To continue to support your planning for the January 21 series, we're also pleased to confirm there will be no late fees for examined unit entries for Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals if you make your entries by 31 December 20. This is a small change from what we previously communicated to better support you and your students.
We know you still have lots of questions and we've collated some FAQ's for Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals.