Guidance

Standard Qualification Fee

Published 7 January 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.

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. Please note, the Data Portal will automatically send you a pre-populated list of qualifications that this request relates to a month before submission date.

What data will be collected?

The current Standard Qualification Fee which is defined in the statutory guidance for our General Conditions of Recognition, Condition F.

Data Portal will automatically send you a pre-populated template of qualifications for the Standard Qualification Fee data collection approximately a month before the submission date.

The pre-populated template contains an extract of your qualifications from the Ofqual Register of Regulated Qualifications which are available to learners (that is, the data collection start date is between the qualification operational start and end dates) and offered in England on the day the data collection opens.

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.

General completion guidelines

1. We published a statement with our approach to gathering information from awarding organisations available here.
2. If end point assessment qualifications are included in your prepopulated list then submit the Standard Qualification Fee as per the statutory guidance for our General Conditions of Recognition, Condition F.
3. If you have a range of options for qualification delivery, for example learner routes and/or delivery methods, then submit the Standard Qualification Fee as per the statutory guidance for our General Conditions of Recognition, Condition F
4. Refer to the statutory guidance for our General Conditions of Recognition, Condition F regarding use of the data exemption option (-2) in the template (“we consider this will only apply in exceptional circumstances”).
5. We collect the current Standard Qualification fee so if you expect the Standard Qualification Fee to change in future please still submit the current Standard Qualification Fee.
6. Please fill in the Standard Qualification Fee column only, don’t change the prepopulated fields.
7. Nil returns are not accepted. Please contact Data Services if any further information is needed.

Table one: summary of data format and validation rules for submission

Note: column 1 is pre-populated with the collection due date and columns 2 to 6 are pre-populated with the Register extract

Name	Description	Position	Validation Regular Expression	Description of Regular Expression
Reporting Date	Date the file was due to be submitted regardless of when it was actually uploaded. Format accepted 120 ODBC canonical yyyy-mm-dd.	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)
Awarding Organisation	Name or acronym of the awarding organisation	2	^.{1,100}$	1 to 100 characters accepted
Qualification Number	Must be a valid qualification number, as it appears on the Ofqual register of qualifications	3	^.{1,10}$	1 to 10 characters accepted
Qualification Title	As it appears on Ofqual’s Register of qualifications	4	^.(1,1000)$	1 to 1,000 characters accepted
Qualification Level	As it appears on Ofqual’s Register of qualifications	5	^.(1,20)$	1 to 20 characters accepted
Qualification Type	As it appears on Ofqual’s Register of qualifications	6	^.(1,255)$	1 to 255 characters accepted
Standard Qualification Fee	The current SQF for qualifications offered in England	7	^\d{1,15}(\.\d{1,2})?$	Decimal value accepted (currency symbol is not permitted) or ‘-2’ for exceptions

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