Moderation - education and early years

The allocation of moderators is at the discretion of NCFE. All moderators attend standardisation to ensure there is consistency across the board. Moderators use the portal to arrange dates, so planning these in advance is helpful. Moderators will work in partnership with you; however, flexibility may be required due to the number of providers moderators’ support.   

You must assign an Assessor, who’ll be responsible for:  

• Maintaining their CPD to ensure they have a qualification and/or recent occupational experience in the subject area they are assessing. Further details of occupational competence requirements can be found in the relevant qualification specification.  
• Maintaining their CPD to ensure that they have an assessor qualification. Where no assessor qualifications are held, centres must provide adequate staff development to ensure Assessors are working to national standards (e.g. attendance at our assessor training events).  
• Carrying out assessments in accordance with the qualification’s criteria as detailed in the qualification specification  
• Ensuring learners’ evidence is valid and meets the standards of the qualification.  
• Ensuring learners have achieved all learning outcomes related to the unit/qualification being assessed.  
• Providing support and feedback to learners throughout the assessment process.  

Further details can be found at How to prepare for quality assurance reviews | NCFE | NCFE  

The video interview 1 and 2 from the Assessor and Teacher Network will support this:  

Education & Early Years Assessor & Teacher Network Dec 23 (youtube.com)  

The assessment methods for this qualification are Direct Observation and Professional Discussion only. Students may do a reflective account, however, this can only be used to move a Professional Discussion on and must be captured within this discussion. You could do a ‘walk and talk’ to cover health and safety aspects, but again, this information must be captured on the observation form.  

Part one (EYE only) is ongoing and finishes at the end of the assessment window. Good planning and organising dates for part two is key, as this will identify/highlight how this could be implemented.  

It is, however, recommended to try to complete all of part one within the assessment window, September-February, so that students can focus on the structured observations and be well prepared to undertake them.  

We suggest that observations and Professional Discussions document what is seen and heard on the visit in as much detail as possible. Where a full narrative has been written, including questions asked by the student to the children as well as their conversations can be very beneficial when looking back at what was observed. We do recommend where possible, audio recording the Professional Discussions, as this gives the most authentic and valid versions and can be very helpful to refer back to when grading in relation to the Structured Observations. 

The Structured Observations have been written to reflect realistic and regularly occurring events or activities that will be very likely to take place on the industry placement. As such, no specific timings have been given, but it is not expected that observations for each Structured Observation will take longer than an hour. However, providers should check the relevant criteria that Structured Observations are intended to cover.  

For EYE part one there are no specific timings for the observations; however, where possible, we advise trying to keep this within one hour to prepare the students for the Structured Observations. There may be some flexibility needed to meet the individual need of the student and when planning how many of the competency skills the student is planning to meet during the visit.  

Planning is key when looking at certain criteria, and the best way for criteria to be achieved is through Direct Observation and Professional Discussion. Where these are carefully planned for, students will be able to meet the required criteria. For example, when looking at 1.11, the content of the curriculum is planned for all children. The carefully planned and sequenced curriculum recognises that some forms of knowledge are important, useful and interesting. These forms of knowledge help prepare children for future learning and are not learned or discovered without explicit teaching. We appreciate observed visits linked to these criteria lend themselves to be more adult-led; however, the student should try to avoid overtly leading the activity. 

Some of the best practice we’ve seen has been where the student had provided a range of resources for the children to explore, which has allowed for the children to initiate their own thoughts and ideas during the activity. The student has then demonstrated the ability to stand back and allow the children to lead their own play whilst offering the correct level of support to extend their learning and thinking. When looking at criteria 1.10, promote equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, effective examples have been demonstrated where the students’ planning has considered both children's individual needs and celebrating diversity of culture and family backgrounds within their own setting. A further example of this has been where the student has thought about providing resources to meet the needs of individual children, making sure they are using appropriate language and correct terminology appropriate for the age, stage and level of understanding of the children they are working with.

During Professional Discussions, the student should demonstrate their understanding of promoting EDI, linking to their own settings policies and procedures related to equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice – explaining how they follow and implement this in practice with examples.  

The EYE students are working towards gaining a license to practice. The competency criteria are based upon the skills practitioners are required to have in order to gain this. Students should be showing consistency and progress within their practice and the competency skills allow the students to be well prepared for the Structured Observations, where they can demonstrate the skills that they have developed.  

During moderation of part one, the assessor and moderator will discuss and agree all competency criteria. Where it is agreed the student is either competent and/or still working towards the competency skills, the moderation of part one can now be signed off.  

Where the student is still working towards, the assessor should ensure they have met the full criteria in order to sign them off as fully competent. The competency skills can be started in year one and do not have to be signed off until the end of assignment 2. Therefore, competency observations can continue until the assessor is happy the student has met full competence.  

To clarify, you do not have to wait until year 2 to sign off any or all of the EYE criteria; we strongly recommend students are observed and working towards these in year 1. However, you do need to consider whether they are fully competent in year 1 based on the knowledge and experience they have to fully meet the assessed skills. Also, as moderation only takes place in year 2, there may be some students who may have to repeat competencies for moderation purposes.   

Completing NCFE administration and internal standardisation training supports to ensure you are assessing fairly. For EYE Part 1, moderators will go through assessment decisions, which will also support. Following Structured Observations, all providers will receive a report focusing on strengths and areas of development – this will include where marking differed between moderators and assessors, and feedback should be used to inform future practice.    

There are no changes this academic year (2023/2024) but the Early Years Educator (Level 3) qualifications criteria has been updated and this will be moderated against in September 2025. 

Revised EYE criteria has been introduced for students registering in September 2024. Students entering their second year in September 2024 will continue on the 41 competencies. All students beginning their T Level in September 2024 will be taught, assessed and moderated on the newly revised criteria. Both versions of the competence criteria can be found on the NCFE website. 

You can use your own activity plan templates, or if you want to use an existing template, there are some best practice examples in the exemplification documents and the employer set project. 

https://www.ncfe.org.uk/qualification-search/qualification-detail/t-level-technical-qualification-in-education-and-childcare-level-3-delivered-by--377?tab=AssessmentMaterials 

Professional Discussions are usually around 30 minutes in length. They should be well planned for so that the assessor and student know what criteria they are covering, and the criteria should be read out in full to the student to give them the opportunity to answer what is asked, allowing the onus to be put on them. Further questions can then be asked to clarify their understanding and/or to dig a little deeper.  

For example,  if you were discussing 1.7 for Education and Early Years (EYE), we suggest you clearly outline the criteria, so ‘please analyse and explain children's learning and development in relation to their stage of development and individual circumstances’, but you may then ask a further question to ensure that they cover and understand biological and environmental factors, which can also impact on learning and development in children.    

For EYE competencies, the latest September 2023 document includes a table which clearly sets out what a Professional Discussion is allowed for. You must use the assessment justification to check within what the Professional Discussion can be used for. Some elements must still be observed. For example, for the prevention and control of infection, only common childhood illnesses and immunisations and isolation/exclusion periods can be discussed – the rest, such as handwashing, must be observed.  Professional discussion is permitted to complement all criteria from September 2024, the preferred method remains direct observation.

Professional Discussions should take place directly after the observation so students can contextualise to the activity observed. Where assessors have a strong knowledge of the criteria and assessed skills needed, they can further support the criteria by making sure all of these are covered before moving on to the next one.  For example, ensuring that students cover communication and language for literacy in the discussion around pedagogical strategies and drawing on observations made, stating ‘I noticed you were taking photos...’, or ’tell me why...’, etc.   

Planning the professional discussions and giving students opportunities to practice them, for example in college with their peers, is crucial and will support time management. For SO3, making use of the ‘walk and talk’ for the health and safety elements and contextualising it to the activity observed should help reduce some discussion time.  

1.2/1.3 and 1.7, la (h) are within SO1 and SO3 to ensure that students can demonstrate their understanding of each area contextualised to what has been observed. For example, in 1.2/1.3. child development, we recommend that this is contextualised to what you have observed, so that students talk through the ages/stages across all areas for the age of the children, but then also discuss how they would adapt this for younger and older children, ensuring they include development stages within this. For 1.7 and 1a (h), they would link this to individual children worked with.   

We recommend that you refer to the chief moderation report for further guidance and examples in the exemplification and standardisation training.  

Yes, however, we recommend these are not read from verbatim.  

The tutor guide for assignment 2 is available here.  

We advise justifications are given for each criterion. It is beneficial to include the reasoning behind your assessment decisions and any points where you feel the criteria could have been observed/discussed in more depth. This will also ensure that you give purposeful feedback to the students. Using the terminology from the marking bands is also useful.  

This should be discussed at a provider level, as planning is key. We recommend booking at least three observations per day – this is possible! Having good communication with settings to support them to understand the importance of the SOs is key. It may be helpful for the students to share their planning with their settings to ensure they are fully aware of what they are intending to achieve during the observation. This would allow the setting to support the student in the best way possible during the Structured Observation assessment window.   

Robust planning and preparation are important. Making sure the students have planned well and are aware of what they need to do/meet in relation to the criteria being covered in each SO is the most effective way of preparing them. Allowing time for mock observations and PDs may also make the process more familiar.   

Students should contextualise this to the activity that has taken place.  

Our standardisation training pack includes good examples to support the marking process, including justification. Please use this to support your standardisation within your organisation. It can be located within the Portal.