As we confirmed in September, in order to support you during coronavirus, we extended our legacy Functional Skills English and maths qualifications (09495–09499 and 09862–09866) to have a last entry date of 31 October 2020 and last certification date of 31 December 2020. 

To support you further, we have now decided to extend the final certification date for legacy Functional Skills English and maths at Level 1 and Level 2 for apprentices only to 21 May 2021. 

This is to enable the small number of apprentices, who had been entered but have been unable to complete assessments due to the recent four-week lockdown and local tier restrictions, to complete their final Functional Skills assessments. We are not extending Entry Level English and maths.

The last date for new starts on Legacy Functional Skills (English and maths at all levels) was 31 August 2019. We will not accept new entries from students who started their programme after this date. Anyone who started learning after this date must start a Reformed Functional Skills qualification.

Paper-based test arrangements

The last date on which you can make an entry to order question papers for a student to sit a paper-based test is 26 March 2021. Your student will not be able to sit a paper-based assessment if they have not been entered by 26th March 2021.

For centre-assessed Level 1 and Level 2 Speaking, Listening and Communication only, please make sure entries are made by 26 March 2021 and claims submitted by 23 April 2021 to allow for external moderation and certification to be processed before the last certification date on 21 May 2021.

On-screen test arrangements

After 26 March 2021, it won’t be possible to register any students in Surpass and associate them with the live or practice subjects for English and mathematics ("the subjects"). Any student registered by 26 March 2021 and associated with the subjects will be able to sit tests until 23 April 2021. Therefore, you must register the students for those subjects in Surpass by 26 March 2021. You will then be able to schedule on-screen tests for them to be taken up to and on 23 April 2021.

These changes have been highlighted in bold in the table below:

If you have any queries about this update, please call our Customer Support Centre on 01223 553998 or email support@ocr.org.uk.