Advice and support

Changes have been made to supporting materials for ASDAN’s qualifications, in particular standards with guidance documents.  

All centre staff with responsibility for delivering, assessing and quality assuring qualifications should make sure they are aware of the changes, and review and update assessment plans and other documents and materials to reflect these changes where necessary.  

There are no changes to ASDAN’s qualification specifications at this time. The requirements regarding what you and your learners must do to achieve these qualifications have not changed for 2023-2024. Additional assessment information, such has how many times something must be evidenced (the sufficiency requirement), is now clearly noted in guidance documents for all qualifications.  

View a summary of changes to the qualification materials  

Access current materials for ASDAN’s qualifications 

Standards with Guidance documents provide details about the delivery, assessment and internal quality assurance of ASDAN qualifications. They can be accessed, free of charge, by logging into your ASDAN account and viewing a qualification course page. Scroll down to the course resources section and they can be found under the qualifications specification tab.

Centres are responsible for ensuring that current versions of qualification specifications and guidance are in use at all times.  

Please contact qualifications@asdan.org.uk if you have any queries about the content of any ASDAN qualification materials. 

In 2020, 2021 and 2022, alternative and contingency arrangements to determine and award grades and qualifications to learners were put in place due to the extraordinary circumstances of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. As a result of the lessons learned during these periods, consideration must be given to the arrangements awarding organisations should put in place in the event of any future national or global event which necessitates the use of alternative assessment and/or awarding arrangements.

ASDAN will follow guidance set out by its regulators regarding the implementation of contingency arrangements for determining and awarding grades/qualifications to ensure its CASS strategy remains appropriate, the secure award of its qualifications, and there is no adverse effect on its learners.

In any future circumstance where assessment cannot go ahead as intended due to a national or global event, ASDAN will provide guidance, as appropriate, to its centres. Guidance may refer to:

• the continuation of assessment as normal
• any adaptations to assessment that may be allowed
• gathering evidence to determine Teacher Assessed Grades (TAGs)
• the retention of evidence used to determine TAGs
• internal quality assurance of TAGs
• external quality assurance of TAGs
• appealing a TAG
• visits to centres
• any additional, reasonable checks required to ensure sufficient monitoring of centre assessed qualifications.

Guidance will be communicated to centres via email direct to centres and via the ASDAN website.

From time to time, ASDAN updates its Policies, Procedures and Application Forms. These can found in the drop down tab found in Policies, regulations and centre guidance. Further down the page a list of helpful guides can be found. ASDAN recommends that you visit the ASDAN Qualifications Centre Guidance section of the website regularly to see if new guides have been added to support you in your delivery, assessment and moderation activities.

Guides updated or created to support you in 2023 were:

1. Centre approval guidance
2. Assessment planning guidance
3. Internal quality assurance guidance
4. Updates to all policies, procedures and notification forms

Please refer to the relevant qualification webpage for current information, resources and guidance materials.

View a summary of changes to the qualification materials  (September 2023)

Access current materials for ASDAN’s qualifications

EQA activity will be conducted both remotely and face to face for the academic year 2023–2024. Your allocated external quality assurer(s) will be in contact to discuss moderation visit arrangements for 2023–2024, where applicable, as well as centre quality assurance reviews.

It is a mandatory requirement that centres provide thorough internal moderation records and a copy of at least one assessment plan for units in their submission. If these documents are not included, your EQA will be in contact to request them and this may delay the moderation.

If any reasonable adjustment has been agreed with ASDAN, please ensure that these are documented on each assessment plan included. Any access arrangements pre-agreed by ASDAN must be documented on the moderation cover sheet (provided along with the moderation sample). This should include where a scribe has been used for any candidate: it is not a requirement to have this pre-agreed but it must be documented.