Portfolio of evidence FAQs

If we decide to move your school to the portfolio of evidence route, your exams officer will receive an email from us confirming the switch. You must continue to make entries as normal until we move your entries to the portfolio of evidence route. Until then your entries may appear as normal on Direct. Once we move your entries to the portfolio of evidence route, you will see the new entry option on Direct. We will not be issuing updates statements of entry following this change.

If your school is in a country or region that we have switched to the portfolio of evidence route, you no longer need to:

• apply to us for access arrangements. However, you should give appropriate access arrangements, such as extra time or enlarged copies of the paper, to eligible students when they complete past papers, mock exams and work made up of questions from past papers that you intend to use as evidence of their performance for school-assessed grades. This will ensure the work reflects the candidate’s usual way of working. We recommend that you maintain records of any access arrangements that were used throughout the year and will be used in any mock exams. You must be confident that any evidence of candidate’s need supports the need for these arrangements. If you would like us to review a sample of the evidence of candidate’s need, we would be happy to do so
• submit any coursework, speaking tests or other non-examined assessments to us. Instead, you should retain and use this work as evidence
• submit internally assessed marks for moderated components on Direct
• submit work samples for internally or externally assessed components using Submit for Assessment
• return candidate scripts to us. Please recycle any despatch and identification labels you may receive from us.

However, there are some tasks you still need to carry out:

• You should continue to submit entries as if you were sitting exams. We will move these entries to the portfolio of evidence route
• You should submit forecast grades via Cambridge International Direct. The forecast grades are not to support the evidence and should be awarded as if candidates were going to sit exams
• Where a carry-forward mark will be used, you must provide candidates’ previous entry details as you would if they were sitting an exam. If you have Cambridge International AS & A Level candidates using carry-forwards that have been entered for a ‘best of both’ option, those candidates will now be entered for the staged route using portfolio of evidence
• You should submit attendance registers using Submit for Assessment when you upload the candidates’ evidence
• You must follow the regulations in sections 4.3 and 4.4 of the Cambridge Handbook for receiving and storing confidential exam materials. If you receive any confidential exam materials from us, you must not open the materials and you must keep them in your secure storage until 24 hours after the Key Time for the exam. Exam materials must not be used towards the evidence for school-assessed grade

If you are following the portfolio of evidence route and your candidates will not be sitting exams, you must still follow the regulations in sections 4.3 and 4.4 of the Cambridge Handbook for receiving and storing confidential exam materials. If you receive any confidential exam materials from us, you must not open the materials and you must keep them in your secure storage until 24 hours after the Key Time for the exam. 

For any exams where you would normally download confidential materials from Digital File Despatch or the School Support Hub, you may still receive an email from us at the Key Time for a particular exam. If you are not running exams then you must not download or print any materials, such as ICT source files. If you or anyone else in your centre mistakenly downloads or prints confidential materials that you do not need because you are not running exams, you must follow the regulations in sections 4.3.1 and 4.4 of the Cambridge Handbook.

As students’ work will have been marked by Cambridge examiners, there will be opportunity to challenge results through an enquiry about results service.

We cannot give feedback to schools about the pieces of evidence to include in the portfolio. The evidence included is at your discretion. There is no requirement for the three pieces of evidence to be a direct match to the exam components in the syllabus. You can choose any three pieces of work which meet the criteria in our guidance, and which give broad coverage of the syllabus content and assessment objectives.

Our ‘Collecting a portfolio of evidence’ guidance includes examples of some problems with the choice of evidence that we have seen in previous series.

No, we do not consider this as part of the marking process.

If we have moved your centre to the portfolio of evidence route, some of the usual aspects of special consideration do not apply. The most significant difference is that we cannot generate a calculated assessment for a missing piece of evidence. This is because the portfolio of evidence entry is a single component with 100% weighting. There are no other components upon which to base a calculation, and so ’absent for an acceptable reason’ is not available for the portfolio of evidence route. If a candidate is absent when a piece of evidence is being generated, or the evidence goes missing, gets damaged or corrupted, or there is otherwise a shortfall in a piece of evidence, then you should replace it. If this is not possible then you should withdraw the candidate.

If a candidate is affected by adverse circumstances while producing one or more of their pieces of evidence, you must try to replace that evidence. If this is not possible you can apply for ‘present but disadvantaged’ in the usual way.

You must use our Special consideration and malpractice guide and the Cambridge Handbook if you are moved to the portfolio of evidence route.

You cannot use confidential material to produce evidence for the portfolio. It is live exam material and can only be used by schools sitting exams.

You should have a delegated Submit for Assessment administrator in your centre, this may be your Exams Officer or it could be someone else. This person can manage accounts for other colleagues at your centre and set up accounts for them. Teachers should have an account set up with the ‘Submit Teacher’ role.