Guidance

FSQ outcomes – Template C

Published 4 March 2022

Applies to England

Introduction

In order to fulfil our regulatory and accreditation functions as set out in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, we require awarding organisations to provide exams delivery data for regulated qualifications.

What data will be collected?

Data should relate only to reformed Functional Skills qualifications (FSQs) in English and maths, at Level 1 and Level 2 for learners in centres in England only.

When will data be collected?

Data will be collected according to the reporting schedule which is agreed and maintained by Ofqual’s data services team.

Updates to formats and guidance

This guidance document will be updated regularly. Any changes to procedure will be incorporated into the guidance document.

How to submit your data

Your data should be submitted to us in CSV format. Please refer to the ‘Connecting to Ofqual’s data portal and uploading data’ document on our webpage to help you submit your files to us. If you need to ask us about a data submission please do contact the Data Services team, please do not send your data files via email to Data Services or to any other Ofqual email address, or via Contact the Regulator in the Portal.

Uploaded data

Once files have been successfully uploaded, the data will be validated against a set of validation rules. These are detailed in the sections below. If validation is successful, the data is automatically transferred into our systems and you will receive email confirmation. If the file is unsuccessful at any stage of validation you will receive an email with details of the validation failure. Please correct your file and resubmit it.

Amendments to data

Ofqual staff will not alter data once it has been submitted. If you find an error or omission after you’ve had a successful upload, please notify us by email. We need to reject the existing submission before you can upload a new file.

How your data will be used

This data will be used to undertake our regulatory activities and, where required, to produce Official Statistics to fulfil our responsibility as a government department.

General completion guidelines

For each data submission, please submit any pass thresholds that have been used to determine the outcomes given in Template B, even if those thresholds have not changed since the previous submission.

For maths, please submit qualification/component-level thresholds – for example, thresholds used to determine the qualification/component-level outcome (not sub-component outcomes; see the guidance given in Template B).

For English, please submit component-level thresholds – for example, thresholds used to determine the component-level outcome (as English components are graded separately).

There is only the need to submit pass thresholds where they have been confirmed at the point of data submission. Please do not include unconfirmed (for example, notional) thresholds.

File format

The file must be CSV format and the first row must be headers as displayed in the ‘Name’ column of the table below. The subsequent rows must have the values of the data to be reported which must match the format and validation rules below.

Name	Description	Position	Valid Regular Expression	Description of Regular Expression
ReportingDate	Date the file was due to be submitted to Ofqual regardless of when it was actually uploaded (this date will be made available by Ofqual).	1	^(20)\d\d[-](0[1-9]|1[012])[-](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$	The date in the following format: year (4 digits), a dash, month (2 digits), a dash, day (2 digits)
AwardingOrganisation	Name of the awarding organisation	2	^.{1,100}$	1 to 100 characters accepted
QualificationNumber	This should be the unique identifier for the qualification as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated Qualifications, for example, 123/1234/1	3	^.{1,100}$	Valid Qualification Number. 1 to 10 characters accepted
AssessmentTitle	Title of the assessment. Either: ‘Reading’, ‘Writing’, ‘Maths’	4	^(Reading|Writing| Maths)$	Accepted values: Reading Writing Maths
AssessmentID	Unique identifier for the assessment used. Where there are multiple test versions available these must be identified by the assessment ID (at the unit level for English and the qualification/component level for maths). For sessional assessments, assessment ID should also reveal the session. Values used in this field should match those given in Template B. This field will be used to link information between the 2 templates	5	^.{1,50}$	1 to 50 characters accepted
MaxMark	The maximum mark available for each learner to achieve For Maths, we would expect qualification/component-level marks (not sub-component marks); for English, we would expect component-level marks	6	^\d{1,3}$	Integer between 0 and 999
PassThreshold	Number of marks required for a pass For Maths, we would expect qualification/component-level thresholds; for English, we would expect component-level thresholds	7	^\d{1,3}$	Integer between 0 and 999

Contacts

For all queries relating to the data collection process, amendments to data previously provided, or for general guidance. please contact:

Data services

Ofqual
2nd floor, 1 Friargate
Station Square
Coventry
CV1 2GN

Email [email protected]