GCSE, AS and A Levels
On 6 January, Education Secretary, Gavin Williamson confirmed that GCSE and A Level exams will not go ahead. Here’s a short summary of the announcement.
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 2021.
We can now confirm, following guidance on January 5 from the DfE, that vocational exams can go ahead as scheduled this month, where schools and colleges 'judge it right to do so'. The full DfE guidance is available to help you manage this.
Read our latest news story for more information and options if students don’t take exams this January.
Unit-level adaptations to make delivery easier for you
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.
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. Please download these from the notice that sits at the top of each qualification page. For some units, there are no changes.
These should be used, alongside specifications and assignments, to plan and carry out assessments.
For teacher-assessed moderated units, we’ve confirmed the arrangements for students producing work from home.
You can also contact our Customer Support Team on support@ocr.org.uk for any questions.
We know you still have lots of questions and we’ve collated some FAQs for Cambridge Nationals and Cambridge Technicals.