Assessment Fees 2021

Oxford Open Learning is a not-for-profit trust. As such the fees below reflect an honest appraisal of what it will cost the trust to deliver on the Ofqual methodology.

* minus the amount you have already paid to OOL for entering this subject as an NEA

Why we have to charge these fees.

Regrettably, the pandemic has again caused exams to be cancelled, even though as recently as December 2020 we were being told that there was no chance that this would happen again. Consequently, before Christmas our advice to students (given in all good faith) was to book exams with outside centres urgently as exam places were expected to be limited and centres were expecting to fill up quickly.

In January Gavin Williamson announced that contrary to all previous assurances, 2021 examinations would not go ahead and immediately it became very clear that Ofqual and the DfE had no plan B ready, hence the massive consultation which ended on the 29th of January and the Ofqual decision document which was eventually released on the 25th of February.

The Ofqual consultation findings implied but gave us no certainty on how our candidates could be assessed and graded internally and even though we have made the assumption that this will be the best option for you, we still have to wait until after the 29th March for clarification of what the assessment process will finally entail. In the meantime, the exam board entry deadline surprisingly remains the 21st March.

Oxford Open Learning is a not-for-profit trust which is not normally involved in the grading process. In normal times this is down to examination centres and the examination boards.

• This year the minimum input required from us will be.
• to process payments and make examination entries to the exam board
• pay the exam board for those entries
• create and submit an Assessment Policy to the examination boards and have this approved
• provide and pay for each tutor to receive training in line with guidance that hasn’t yet been released as to how to assess a “basket of evidence”
• determine what will or will not be admissible evidence in this “basket”
•  each Tutor will then have to
  • carefully weigh all the evidence that is available to them,
  • chose which evidence we use to make the assessment,
  • augment this assessment where necessary with Optional Assessment Material and recorded vivas.
  • mark, grade and validate any optional assessment that is completed
  • use their professional judgement to provide a grade
• the Trust will then have to carefully moderate between teachers to ensure that we have standardised those grades as much as possible
• accurately submit those grades to the examination board
• deal with a completely unproven appeals process
• Send exam certificates in a secure manner

Last year we followed a similar but different process and we have an idea of the time, effort and costs involved. This is why we need to charge the fees to students to assess them.

Where an examination centre would like Oxford Open Learning to do all this work for them to provide a final grade so that they can submit it as their own assessment, we will naturally have to charge for this service, please get your centre to contact us.

If a centre is willing to assess and grade you itself, and would like you to provide the Tutor-marked assignments to them, the Trust will send them a Student Profile confirming the work you have submitted and the marks that our tutors awarded. This service will be free of charge.