Timing of assessments and general support

General support

Please provide the learner id(s) and group(s) relevant to any technical support requests. It makes it much quicker for us to find learners if we know what school it is, their group and their learner id and name. Marite provides first line support directly from the office so it is best to contact her in the first instance either directly by telephone or by e-mail. 

There are no set times for coursework moderation or taking grading exams. This is to provide flexibility in order that teachers can tailor their learning programmes as free from constraints as possible.  There is one key date to consider and this is the "first entry" date. For TLM qualifications it is set at the 30th June. This is the date that the current cohort of learners will be assumed to have been first awarded a TLM qualification for the purpose of league table points. It is also the last date that coursework or exam results can be submitted. This provides us with time to sort out any final marking of papers moderation etc in order to give returns to the DfE by their August deadline. It would be a good idea to plan to get all coursework moderation cleared by the end of April and all mock exams completed by then too. This will provide you and us with time to fix any problems that arise. Note that if a pupil or pupils completes everything in Year 10 and the qualification is claimed before the "first entry" date it will only count in the league tables when they get into year 11 and even if they retake the qualification in year 11 later, it is the first entry result that will count. 

Moderation and examinations on demand

TLM operates an on demand service as this is most convenient for schools.  We aim to turn around moderation evidence within a week of a request but we can't guarantee to do this at the most pressured times. It helps if you can spread moderation as an on-going part of the course. Getting some work moderated early in the course is advised because the feedback from this will help you know if you are assessing at the right level from the outset. Since we do not grade coursework, this makes things much easier to manage. The key question is does the evidence meet the standard interpreted in the context of the general level description? All coursework must be completed and moderated before the candidate takes the grading exam.  We specify 6 weeks notice before an exam can be taken but in less pressured times we will not have to enforce this rigidly. If you want to provide an examination at shorter notice you must ring or e-mail and clear it with TLM first. We aim to get exams marked within a week but again this will depend on the numbers taking exams at any particular time.  Paper based exams will take longer because of the additional time for administration. If you are setting the mock exam and following it up with the real thing, make sure you have left enough time between them for us to mark the papers and for you to take remedial action as a result before the candidates tackle the real thing.