Supporting exams officers on results days 2020: Cambridge Technicals

Alison Leather - Customer Support Manager (South East)

Last week I wrote about how we’re supporting your GCSE, A Level and Cambridge Nationals results days and provided information about giving students their centre assessment grades and rank orders. This week, I wanted to provide some more details about what will be available for Cambridge Technicals.

We usually issue results for the June series examined units (2016 suite) in August. This year, we’ll also be issuing moderated unit results for both 2016 and 2012 suites at the same time, together with any full qualification awards. 

Cambridge Technicals results for both 2012 and 2016 suites will be issued to centres just after midnight on 12 August (the same time as A Levels). However, unlike A Levels, there’s no ‘embargo’ on these results and you can give them to students as soon as they’re published – although you may wish to wait and give out results at the same time as your A Level results. 

Please be aware we won’t be publishing grade boundaries, examiners' reports or mark schemes this year.

EDI results files

If you made EDI entries or included the UCI when you made entries via Interchange, we'll be issuing results via A2C just after midnight on 12 August. You’ll receive the following files: 

• 9C19 – Up to two files both containing 2012 suite qualification grades and moderated unit results – Please download all files. 
• 9I19 – Up to two files both containing 2016 suite qualification grades and moderated unit results – Please download all files. 
• 6E20 – One file containing June 2020 series examined unit grades (2016 suite only). 

If you’re a SIMS user and want to import your qualification results into the summer season, we produce specific ‘summer’ basedata to enable you to do this and instructions on an extra step needed to amend your results before importing them are available here. You don’t need to use this though, results will import into the September series without this – it’s an optional download.

Candidate unit achievement report: 2016 suite

To view Cambridge Technicals (2016) unit results via Interchange, you can generate a candidate unit achievement report to show unit results for examined and internally assessed units together with the date achieved.

For the examined units, these normally include both the grade and the marks achieved. However, as there were no exams this year, we’ve replaced the marks with the following scales, which relate to the grade achieved. 

For Level 3 Technicals: 

1. = R (near pass) 
2. = Pass 
3. = Merit 
4. = Distinction 

For Level 2 Technicals: 

1. = Achieved/Pass 
2. = Merit 
3. = Distinction 

To access this report, log in to Interchange, hover over ‘Cambridge Technicals’ and click on 'Results documents' in the left-hand menu. There’s a sample on our website. 

If a candidate has topped up or moved down since units were first taken, some of the results may appear on the report under a different qualification size. If all units are not showing for a learner, please check the reports for the other size qualifications in the suite.

Downloading qualification results

You can view and download qualification results within Interchange within the ‘Search OCR area’. To do this, hover over ‘Results’ and click on ‘Candidate achievements’ in the left-hand menu. Tick the 'Detailed results' box then enter your search criteria. If you enter ‘05*’ in the ‘Scheme Code’ box, this will return all the Cambridge Technicals qualification results. Once you’ve clicked ‘Search’, you can export the results to a csv file. We've created a video to provide you with additional support.

Grade and rank order reports 2020

We’ve created some additional reports to help you understand how we’ve calculated your students’ results this year, and the data we have used in the calculation:

• The centre level data shows you the distribution of grades for each source of evidence used to calculate your students’ unit grades.
• For each candidate, you can see the unit centre assessment grade and rank order which you submitted, and the final calculated grade which will appear on their certificates.

We have produced an example of the reports for Cambridge Technicals.

These reports will be available to download in a zip file on 12 August. Each zip file will contain all the results for your centre in separate spreadsheets for each unit, which means you may have a lot of files for your centre.

To access the reports, log in to Interchange, hover over and then click on ‘Grades and rank order reports 2020’ in the left-hand menu. You will need to have the Centre Administrator role in Interchange to view this area.

As I said last week, however you manage results days this summer, I hope they go smoothly for you, your colleagues and your students.

About the author

Alison Leather - Customer Support Manager (South East)

Alison is Customer Support Manager for the South East region. The Customer Support Team provides support, training and guidance for centres administering OCR qualifications.

Alison has worked in education since 1995, as an Exams Manager in a college, a Centre Support Officer with the National Assessment Agency (NAA) and an Exams Officer in a secondary school – so she knows how challenging and rewarding it can be working in the exams office. Alison joined OCR as Customer Support Manager in 2007.