Qualifications in Wales (QiW): changes to qualification performance information

QiW is an online database owned and managed by Qualifications Wales. It contains details of all qualifications that are approved or designated for teaching in Wales for learners aged under 19, excluding higher education. It also hosts performance (in terms of school performance measures) and curriculum information for those qualifications up to and including Level 3, which is maintained by the Welsh Government.

Updates are made to QiW throughout the year and may have an impact on school performance information for certain qualifications. This is mainly due to awarding organisations making changes to their qualifications or, in other circumstances, due to manual changes by the Welsh Government where performance information has generated in error.

The majority of changes extend or bring forward the Certification End Date (CED) of a qualification resulting in the qualification either being able to count towards applicable performance measures in additional reporting years (for extensions), or in fewer reporting years (for those brought forward).

Other changes by awarding organisations, such as those to the Guided Learning Hours (GLH), Level, Grading Scale or Age Range of a qualification, can have a direct impact on the contributing values of a qualification towards relevant performance measures. In these cases, the performance values must be updated on QiW to maintain the accuracy, quality and fairness of the school performance measurement system in Wales.

However, where this results in a notable reduction to performance values, Welsh Government policy is to allow a grace period before the performance values are reduced on QiW. This ensures that schools are not unfairly disadvantaged where pupils have already started a course before the relevant change was made.

The grace period is proportionate to the time it is expected to take to teach the course based on its size equivalence to a GCSE (for Level 2 qualifications) or to an A level (for Level 3 qualifications). For example, the grace period for a qualification equivalent to 0.5 of a GCSE would be one year.

A list of qualifications pending a reduction to performance values can be found in the table, along with the relevant reporting year from which the change will take place. For more details about the individual changes, please view the ‘Performance and Curriculum Information’ section for the qualification on QiW, drilling down into the relevant reporting year.