Guidance

FSQ outcomes – Template A

Published 4 March 2022

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.

What data will be collected?

Data should relate only to reformed Functional Skills qualifications (FSQs) in English, at Level 1 and Level 2 for learners in centres in England only.

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 web page 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, 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 email. 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 is intended to collect each qualification-level outcome issued for English during the reporting period, with 1 row per learner, per qualification outcome
• data should include English qualifications only, for Level 1 and Level 2 only
• outcomes for maths qualifications are not included here, but are included in Template B.
• for resits, simply insert one new line per result,^{[footnote 1]} for example, a learner may have one row giving a fail grade, followed by a new row for a pass achieved on a resit

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	Valid Regular Expression	Description of Regular Expression
ReportingDate	Date the file was due to be submitted to Ofqual regardless of when it was actually uploaded (this date will be made available by Ofqual)	1	^(20)\d\d[-](0[1-9]|1[012])[-](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$	The date in the following format: year (4 digits), a dash, month (2 digits), a dash, day (2 digits)
AwardingOrganisation	Name of the awarding organisation	2	^.{1,100}$	1 to 100 characters accepted
CentreNCN	Centre’s National Centre Number as allocated by the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ)[footnote 1]	3	^\d{1,5}$	Valid NCN code. Up to 5-digit integer accepted -2 also accepted where centre does not have a NCN
CentreURN	Centre’s Unique Reference Number as assigned by the Department for Education[footnote 2]	4	^\d{1,6}$	Valid Centre URN. Up to 6-digit integer accepted -2 also accepted where centre does not have a URN
CentreIdentifierOther	Any other number allocated to the centre or assessment venue by individual awarding organisations. It must be provided if a candidate is registered to a centre and neither CentreURN nor CentreNCN are available[footnote 2]	5	^.{1,15}$	1 to 15 characters accepted -2 permitted where at least one of NCN or URN have been provided or for candidates who are not registered to a centre
UniqueCandidateIdentifier	Unique Candidate Identifier (JCQ code), where available[footnote 2]	6	^.{1,13}$	A valid UCI. Alpha numeric 13 characters accepted. -2 accepted where the candidate does not have a UCI
UniqueLearnerNumber	Unique Learner Number (ESFA code), where available[footnote 3]	7	^.{1,10}$	1 to 10 characters accepted -2 accepted where the candidate does not have a ULN
UniquePupilNumber	Unique Pupil Number (UPN) for the candidate provided by the Department for Education[footnote 3]	8	^.{1,13}$	A valid UPN. Alpha numeric 13 characters accepted. -2 accepted where the candidate does not have a UPN
CandidateIdentifierOther	Any other unique candidate number allocated by individual awarding organisation. Must be provided where UCI, ULN and UPN are not available[footnote 3]	9	^.{1,20}$	1 to 20 characters accepted -2 permitted where at least one of UCI, ULN or UPN have been provided
FirstName	Candidate first name	10	^.{0,150}$	0 to 150 characters accepted
MiddleNames	Candidate middle name(s), where able to be separated from first names. Can be left blank where middle names are not known or cannot be separated out from first names.	11	^.{0,150}$	0 to 150 characters accepted
Surname	Candidate surname or family name	12	^.{0,150}$	0 to 150 characters accepted
DOB	Candidate’s date of birth	13	^(19|20|29)\d\d[-](0[1-9]|1[012])[-](0[1- 9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$	Date in the following format: year (4 digits), a dash, month (2 digits), a dash, day (2 digits) 2999-12-31 accepted if DOB unknown
QualificationNumber	This should be the unique identifier for the qualification as it appears in Ofqual’s Register of Regulated Qualifications, for example, 123/1234/1.	14	^.{1,10}$	Valid Qualification Number. 1 to 10 characters accepted.
ResultDate	The date that the qualification result was issued to the centre (or candidate if result issued directly to candidate)	15	^(20)\d\d[- ](0[1-9]|1[012])[- ](0[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])$	Date in the following format: year (4 digits), a dash, month (2 digits), a dash, day (2 digits)
QualificationGrade	Qualification grade awarded. Submit fail grades where possible, but it is recognised that fail grades are not always issued	16	^(P|F)$	Pass or Fail

Example file format can be found on this page.

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 Data.Services@ofqual.gov.uk

1. The validation rules in the Data Portal have been set up to output warnings when duplicate rows have been detected, but these will not prevent your file from being accepted. The warnings are there as a safeguard but can be safely ignored if duplicates were expected. ↩ ↩²

2. To allow us to identify the centre please provide at least one of CentreNCN, CentreURN or CentreIdentifierOther. If more than one is collected, please provide as many as are available ↩ ↩² ↩³

3. To allow us to identify the learner please provide at least one of UniqueCandidateIdentifier, UniqueLearnerNumber, UniquePupilNumber or CandidateIdentifierOther. If more than one is collected, please provide as many as are available ↩ ↩² ↩³