2. Qualification Details
Vocational (career-based) BTEC qualifications are designed to give learners the skills and knowledge
needed to move into employment or progress to higher education. The content of your qualification is
therefore created and developed with the support and input of employers, industries and Higher
Education establishments. These qualifications are written to meet the regulatory expectations of
Government and national organisations. The delivery and assessment of your qualification is carefully
planned and monitored through clearly identified quality assurance measures to ensure that every BTEC
learner’s achievement is judged fairly and equally.
There are still two different frameworks being delivered at Coulsdon College for BTEC. Your teacher
should make you aware which framework is being delivered (if you do not know, ask).
QCF – This is the old specification dating back to 2010 which will be phased out soon. These courses are
assessed solely through coursework.
RQF – This is the new specification which in all subjects, includes external assessment as well as internally
assessed coursework. This could consist of an exam or a controlled assessment with pre-seen content.
Again, ask your teacher if you do not know what format your external assessment is.
Registration & Certification Information
BTEC learners are required to be registered with Pearson before November of the year they commence
their studies.
It is vitally important that deadlines for assessed work are met to prevent any delays in your certification.
Delays to your certification could have an impact on getting a place at University
For external exams. the cost of your first attempt is included but if you are eligible and require a resit for
any exams you may be required to pay this additional charge.
Induction
An induction period will take place at the start of your course. The purpose of this is to ensure you are
clear about the systems and structure of your course and have information that will ensure your success
on the qualification.
The induction to your studies will include information on:
● Specific details about your BTEC qualification
● Centre policies
○ Discipline
○ Malpractice
○ Health and Safety
○ Safeguarding
○ Equality and Diversity
● The teaching team and timetables
● Where to seek support (pastoral / academic)
3. Teaching,Learningand PastoralSupport
Your BTEC qualification will be achieved through the delivery of structured lessons, informal and formal
assessments and external assessment. Active participation in all aspects of your studies will be required
to successfully achieve the qualification.
At the commencement of your studies your assessors (teachers) will work with you to set a target grade
for your overall achievement. This will be monitored throughout your course and targets will be set to
help you achieve your goal; use this to focus the effort and time you invest in your assessments.
Assessmentand Verification
All BTEC qualifications are regulated by rules regarding the management of the quality of assessment of
learning and the awarding of grades. You will not be expected to complete a formal assessment to
demonstrate your understanding of a topic, or part of a topic, until all relevant teaching has been
completed.
Internal Assessment
The content of the assessment will be outlined on an Assignment Brief; the design of these will be
explained during induction. For every assessment there will be a clear deadline by which the work must
be submitted to your assessor (teacher). There is a ONE submission policy in place for BTEC assignments.
However, it is also understood that under certain conditions it might be appropriate to allow a learner an
additional opportunity to achieve more.
You must understand that in order for the Lead Internal Verifier of your course to be able to authorise a
resubmission these conditions must be met:
● A learner has handed in their initial submission by the published deadline (or applied for an
extension in line with published procedures)
● A learner has confirmed that their submission was their own work and/or appropriately
acknowledged another’s work
● The assessor has authenticated the learner’s submission and believes that the learner can
improve their submission independently with no further teaching
Your work will be marked within 2 weeks following that a sample of the assessments will be checked by
another member of the teaching team to ensure the grading is fair and accurate. Once this has been
completed you will be given your grade for that assignment and feedback which will help you to improve
and develop your skills.
External Assessment (where applicable)
In order to meet the needs and feedback of employers and Higher Education there has been an increase
in the rigour and robustness to the way BTECs are assessed. This comes through the introduction of
external assessment i.e. Pearson formally mark and grade external units. The aimof external assessment
is to help prepare learners to fulfil their potential in either the world of work or progress to further study.
External assessments will usually take place in January with a retake opportunity in May / June.
4. PlagiarisminCoursework
When you submit any coursework for marking, you will be asked to sign an authentication statement
confirming that you have read and followed these regulations.
If there is anything that you do not understand, you must ask your teacher.
Coursework provides you with an opportunity to do some independent research into a topic. The
research you do will involve looking for information in published sources such as textbooks,
encyclopedias, journals, TV, radio, and on the internet.
Using information from published sources (including the internet) as the basis for your coursework is a
good way to demonstrate your knowledge and understanding of a subject. You must take care how you
use this material though - you cannot copy it and claimit as your own work.
The regulations state that: “the work which you submit for assessment must be your own”; “you must
not copy from someone else or allow another candidate to copy from you”.
If you use the same wording as a published source, you must place quotation marks around the passage
and state where it came from. This is called “referencing”. You must make sure that you give detailed
references for everything in your work which is not in your own words. A reference from a printed book
or journal should show the name of the author, the year of publication and the page number, for
example: (Morrison, 2000, pg.29).
For material taken from the internet, your reference should show the date when the material was
downloaded and must show the precise web page, not the search engine used to locate it. This can be
copied from the address line. For example:
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/16/sosteacher/history/49766.shtml), downloaded 5 February 2019.
You must also include a bibliography at the end of your work. This must list the full details of publications
you have used in your research, even where these are not directly referred to, for example: Morrison, A.
(2000) “Mary, Queen of Scots”, London: Weston Press.
If you copy the words or ideas of others and don’t show your sources in references and a bibliography,
this will be considered as cheating.
5. Plagiarisminvolves taking someone else’s words, thoughts or ideas and trying to pass them off as your
own. It is a form of cheating which is taken very seriously.
Don’t think you won’t be caught; there are many ways to detect plagiarism.
Teachers can spot changes in the style of writing and use of language.
Teachers are highly experienced subject specialists who are very familiar with work on the topic
concerned — they may have read the source you are using (or even marked the essay you have
copied from!).
The College uses special software called ‘Turnitin’ (see next page) which can be used to match
phrases or pieces of text with original sources and to detect changes in the grammar and style of
writing or punctuation. This will tell your teacher exactly how much of the work is your own so
they can make a judgement whether it is plagiarised or not.
Penalties for breaking the regulations
If your work is submitted and it is discovered that you have broken the regulations, one of the following
penalties will be applied:
The piece of work will be marked as ungraded and the teacher will record the plagiarismon your
Pro-Monitor record.
Your teacher will discuss the plagiarismwith you and may give you an opportunity to re-write the
work with a new, very tight deadline. The teacher will then re-mark the work.
If you are caught plagiarising a second time, you will be given a formal, written warning which will
go on your record and parents will be invited in to discuss this. Your teacher may also ask you to
complete assignments in controlled conditions in future. This means you will only be able to
submit work that has been supervised by teachers or in the ILC.
Any further incidents of plagiarismwill be formally reported to Pearson and they will decide
whether to withdraw you from the qualification.
REMEMBER – IT’S YOUR QUALIFICATION SO IT NEEDS TO BE YOUR OWN WORK
6. What is Turnitin?
Turnitin is a service that compares your work against a database of academic sources, student papers and
websites to check for signs of plagiarism. All work you submit for internally assessed coursework units
must be uploaded to Moodle to go through this service.
Uploading a piece of work to Turnitin produces an originality report which enables teachers and students
to identify areas of matching text, words, poor citation and copying.
Your work will be given an originality score to show what percentage of your work is not original. Your
teacher will make a judgement as to whether this is acceptable or not based on the amount of expected
referenced material.
When you check your feedback from Moodle it will look something like this (yours will look a bit different).
If you click on the originality score, you will see a report to see exactly what work was not original (shaded).
7. Turnitin searches your text for matches with:
the internet and archived copies of websites
academic journal articles from electronic databases
the entire database of work submitted by students and lecturers at every other UK College and
University that subscribes to Turnitin
