Guidance

T15 Modified papers: guide to the data submission process

Published 19 March 2021

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. We collect the data on behalf of CCEA Regulation and share this data with them.

What data will be collected?

Modified papers data will be collected for GCSE, AS and A level.

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 by emailing [email protected], 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 emailing [email protected]. 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

• This template should be country specific. Awarding organisations should enter the relevant country e.g. England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Other UK Regions and Non UK. Each category of Modified Paper will need to be broken down by country.

• Total number of modified paper requests - should be the actual number of modified papers requested. So if 10 Braille papers were requested for one maths paper, this would count as 10, not one because they were all for the same paper.

• Total number of candidates granted modified papers – This figure will usually be much lower than the field referenced above, as a candidate will typically have a request against several different papers.

• Each field showing the category of modified papers is for the number granted. Adding all these categories together, should give a figure very close to the number of requests, with any difference, because some requests were rejected.

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	Validation Regular Expression	Description of Regular Expression
Exam series	Exam series data relates to e.g. June 2023	1	^(January|March|June|November)([ ][0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9])$	Full month name of exam series and year.
Awarding organisation	Name of the awarding organisation	2	^.{1,100}$	One, to one hundred characters accepted
Reporting date	Date the file was due to be submitted regardless of when it was actually uploaded. Format accepted either 103 British/French dd/mm/yyyy, or 120 ODBC canonical yyyy-mm-dd	3	^(20)\d\d[-](0[1-9]|1[012])[-](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$	The date in the following format: day (two digits), forward slash, month (two digits), forward slash, year (four digits), or: year (four digits), a dash, month (two digits), a dash, day (two digits)
Qualification	Type of qualification for example GCSE	4	^(GCSE|AS|A level)$	One of the following list: GCSE, AS, A level
Country	For awarding organisation’s to enter the specific country the data relates to for example England, Wales, Northern Ireland	5	^(England|Wales|Northern Ireland|Non UK|Other UK Regions)$	England, Wales, Northern Ireland, Non UK, Other UK Regions will be accepted
Total number of modified paper requests	Total number of modified paper requests from the awarding organisation	6	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
Total number of candidates granted modified papers	Total number of candidates granted modified papers by awarding organisation	7	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
No. of Braille papers & Braille labels granted	Total number of Braille question papers and tactile diagrams with Braille labels granted by awarding organisation	8	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
No. of Modified 18 point bold papers granted	Number of Modified 18 point bold papers granted by awarding organisation	9	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
No. of Modified 24 point bold papers granted	Number of Modified 24 point bold papers granted	10	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
Modified language granted	Modified language	11	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
No. of Tactile Diagrams with print labels granted	Number of Tactile Diagrams with print labels granted by awarding organisation	12	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
No. of Transcripts of listening test/video granted	Number of Transcripts of listening test/video granted by awarding organisation	13	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
No. of Non-interactive electronic QPs granted	Number of Non-interactive electronic question papers granted	14	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
Number of other formats granted	Total number of other formats granted	15	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted
Total number of discrete modified papers produced	Example: If five Braille papers and five A4 18 point bold papers were produced, for the same maths question paper, this would count as two. If there were two maths papers (paper A & B) this would count as four	16	^\d{1,5}$	A numeric value between 0 and 99,999 accepted

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]