If your school offers Pearson BTEC qualifications, these will need to be set up on your Arbor site's Qualification Offerings page in order to make EDI entries and assign candidates to their room and seat. The process of setting up BTEC qualifications on Arbor is slightly different to most other qualifications - this article will explain the steps you'll need to take in order to have your BTECs set up correctly.
Please note that Pearson have issued new 9Y22 revised BTEC Technical awards, please see the guidance here: Making entries into 9Y Pearson Redeveloped BTEC Tech Awards and 1Y Units
Permissions
You'll need the Qualifications: Administer All Students permission to set up exams. If you don't have permissions, ask your administration team to give you permission using these instructions.
What you'll need before getting started
- Pearson's Entry code information - available online or as a PDF download.
- Access to Pearson Direct if basedata is required.
- The entry codes for any BTEC Units, and course/scheme codes for your centre's version of each BTEC Award that is offered.
- If your BTECs have centre-specific basedata, you'll need to know whether you'll be managing early registrations in the Awarding Organisation (in which case you'll only need the 7B file), or both registrations and results in Arbor (in which case you'll need both the 9B and 7B files).
Pearson 9B files
9B files are issued to schools much before 7B files. These are optional to import, and can be used to make registrations early. If you'd like to import these, follow the same instructions as below. You would just enter students into the 9B September series instead.
If you'll be making early registrations through the awarding organisation (not through Arbor), just follow the instructions below.
Setting up BTECs
Step 1 - Get your BTEC Basedata
Arbor automatically imports all publicly available basedata - this includes BTEC Unit basedata for series such as January or June (available via the Pearson website). This basedata is imported overnight on the day it is released - so should appear for use in Arbor the day afterwards.
We are unable to automatically automatically import BTEC Award registration/result basedata for the September (9B) and July (7B) series. This basedata is centre-specific, and needs to be imported into your site.
Please note that you may have other series available for units, such as Jan (1) and June (6). Pearson BTEC awards are only available for September (9) and July (7) series.
Obtain the 7B basedata from Pearson.
When requesting basedata from Pearson, please ensure the correct year's basedata is provided - this will be indicated by the filename you receive (e.g. a 7B22 basedata provides the July 2022 series, 9B21 provides the September 2021 series).
Step 2 - Import your basedata
You should import your own basedata. Before doing so, make sure that:
- You have added your school's centre number: Set up your centre
- The basedata file needs is in a zip folder
- The basedata is your centre-specific Pearson basedata only - uploading other basedata will not work
Go to Students > Examinations > Administration > Pearson Basedata Upload.
Click +Add and select the file, then click Upload.
Step 3 - Set up your Qualification Offering
Once you've imported your BTEC basedata, we'd recommend you then add your BTEC Award(s) to the Qualification Offering page as the first step of the setup process.
Go to Students > Examinations and click the +Add new button. Find the award and click Add offering.
When adding BTEC Awards, it is often more efficient to use your school's course code for the qualification, rather than the QAN - this is because the former should return the exact result you require, whereas the latter with return a list of all versions of the Award that we have on record. You can see the difference this makes in the following two screenshots.
Please note that you need to search the right thing for 9Y22 revised BTEC Technical awards, please see the guidance here: Making entries into 9Y Pearson Redeveloped BTEC Tech Awards and 1Y Units
When adding BTEC Units to your Qualification Offering page, we recommend using the Entry Code - this should produce a single result for you. Please note that it is only possible to add externally assessed BTEC Units to Arbor (i.e. units that are published in Pearson's 'Entries' guidance) - internally assessed Units/components are not available.
Please note that you need to search the right thing for 9Y22 revised BTEC Technical awards, please see the guidance here: Making entries into 9Y Pearson Redeveloped BTEC Tech Awards and 1Y Units
Once you have added your BTEC Awards and Units to the Qualification Offering, you can link them together in order to make for easier administration, such as making entries and withdrawals.
To link an Award and Unit, go to the unit's page via your Qualification Offering.
Once the Qualification Offering for (Unit's name) page appears, select the Qualification Offering tab.
Scroll down to the 'Manually Linked Awards' section, and click 'Add'. On the slide over that appears, enter your Award's course/scheme code - the appropriate option should appear in the drop-down menu for your to select. Once the option is selected, click 'Add offering'.
Once this has been done, you'll seen the Award appear under the Manually Linked Awards section. You can also then find the Unit on the Entries by Student Group page if you've selected your course/scheme code as the 'Scheme (EDI Only)' option.
Step 4 - Make entries
Once you have added your BTEC qualifications, you'll need to enter your candidates into the awards: Entering candidates in Arbor
When entering your students, ensure you select the appropriate 7B series. This will usually be 7B and then the last two digits of the calendar year - for example, 7B20 was the series for summer 2020 and 7B21 will be the series for summer 2021.
Step 5 - Generate and send off your EDI Entries file
Pearson will ask your school to provide a 7B Results Request file in order for EDI results to be made available in the August results period. You can create this file in Arbor, in the same way as you would generate a standard EDI Entries file.
After you've entered the students, you'll need to generate an EDI Entries file. You can see how to do this here: Generating EDI Entry files
If you are happy with the contents of the file, click on the Download EDI File button. This EDI file will be your 7B Results Request file, which you should send to Pearson through A2C.
What happens on exams results day?
On exam results days, if you completed the steps above, Pearson will give you your results file. You'll then be able to import the results: Entering Exam results in Arbor
If you did not complete the steps above, Pearson will not issue your results file until you complete these steps. Although you can add the results manually, we recommend contacting Pearson for your entries file, and we'll import this for you as soon as we can.
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