At this time of year, you may be thinking about submitting young people for Arts Award, and so in this blog we will share some guidance for how you can get ready!
Timing is everything!
The first thing we suggest is to work out your timings, and by this we don’t just mean when are you going to enter young people, but when you need to receive their certificates by, and are you factoring in enough time for moderation, if you are selected?
We recommend you allow eight weeks from the point of entering young people for the award to the issue of certificates, in the event moderation is required. This means there are some practicalities you need to consider, for example if you enter close to the end of the summer term, and you are selected for moderation you would need to be available to upload portfolios and correspond with the Trinity team during the summer holidays. If this is not possible, then you would need to enter earlier in the term or wait until the new academic year.
If you are entering Gold students, who are hoping to use the UCAS points for September university entry, you need to be aware of the UCAS deadline and plan accordingly. If your centre is selected for moderation this needs to have taken place by the second Friday in June, in order to allow time for your results to be sent to UCAS.
Another thing to consider, if you will no longer be working with the young people after they have completed their award, is will you still be able to get in touch with young people if, for example, you discover there is missing evidence in their portfolio? If not, your planning should include time for assessing and reviewing the portfolios before you lose touch with young people.
If you are selected for moderation you will have up to two weeks to upload your digitised portfolios and completed evidence locator forms. While there are things you can do to ease this workload, see below, this will still take time, and so you need to ensure that you have time set aside for this. This blog about timescales contains some useful information.
Brush up on the assessment and moderation process
If you have not entered young people before, or it has been a while since you last entered and the process is a little hazy, then you might find it useful to watch the recording of our meet the moderator webinar. In this webinar our Lead Senior Moderator runs through the whole assessment process, including what happens if you are moderated, and answers many of the most common questions.
Getting portfolios ready
Proper signposting and being able to easily navigate evidence is essential to a successful moderation. If young people are able to, ask them to support with this, and check through their portfolios making sure pages/slides etc are clearly labelled. They could also create index pages identifying where evidence for each part is located. This way, if you are selected for moderation and need to complete the evidence locator forms, much of this work will already be done.
If your young people have created digital portfolios ask them to check things like whether pictures are clear and in the right orientation, do any embedded videos or links work? Again, this preparation by young people now, will cut down on work for you later if you are moderated.
You may also find it helpful to take a look at the portfolio examples in the hub on Arts Award Voice.
Complete your assessment
Before you can enter you need to complete your assessment of the portfolios. To support with this you can use our evidence checklists, to make sure there is no evidence missing, and you may also find the assessment criteria support resource useful in ensuring that evidence is of the required standard.
If possible, we recommend running an internal standardisation process, where advisers check and review one another’s assessment. You can find our top tips for your internal assessment process here.
You will need to complete the enrolment and marks spreadsheet, entering each student’s marks for each part. You may find it helpful to complete this as you go, marking off a part once you know it has been completed.
You may also want to request a support session, where a consultant can review your portfolios before submission. This might be particularly useful if it is the first time you have entered for Arts Award. You can request a session here.
Submit young people
You submit young people by uploading the marks and enrolment spreadsheet on the centre portal, and there is guidance and videos to support you with this here. However, if you are struggling with this process, then you can email your completed enrolment and marks spreadsheets to ArtsAwardOrders@trinitycollege.com. We’ll process your order, email you the invoice and confirm whether or not your centre has been selected for moderation within 5 working days.
If you are entering after 1st May 2025, paper certificates will be posted out within four weeks of successfully submitting your entries or, if moderation is required, within four weeks of confirmation of your moderation result.
We hope that this helps you to feel more confident about entering your young people for Arts Award, but if you have any questions, please do get in touch on support@trinitycollege.com