Contingency planning 

We know that challenging circumstances arise, or events outside of your control mean that things don’t always go to plan.

Therefore, it’s essential to have contingency plans in place to mitigate the impact of any potential disruption and minimise the impact on your learners.

Our External Assessment Contingency Planning Policy offers guidance on the contingency planning your centre should carry out in advance and ensure all colleagues are aware of the measures in place. Within this guidance, examples of disruption to consider include (but are not limited to):

• criminal activity (for example, bomb threat or cyber-attack)
• incidents within the local community
• industrial action
• public health incidents (for example, flu pandemic)
• serious injury to a learner or member of staff
• severe weather (for example, flooding)
• significant damage to centre property (for example, fire)
• supply shortages (for example, transport issues).

When drafting contingency plans, you should consider the following guidance:

• emergency planning and response from the Department for Education (DfE)
• what schools, colleges and other centres should do if exams or other assessments are seriously disrupted by the DfE
• preparing for disruption to examinations from the Joint Council for Qualifications (JCQ).

In the event of widespread local or national disruption, you should look for timely information shared by the regulators in England (Ofqual), Wales (Qualifications Wales), and Northern Ireland (CCEA Regulation), as well as the relevant governmental departments in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. You must also ensure that you’re monitoring other relevant local and national agencies, as well as any communication shared by NCFE.

For full information on contingency planning, please refer to our External Assessment Contingency Planning Policy.

Resilience arrangements 

Read the information on resilience arrangements which focuses on how to gather and retain evidence on learner performance, which can be used to form grading decisions should there be any event with such severe consequences that it would necessitate a government decision to cancel exams or other formal assessment.