With the changing of the guard from the 2010 BTEC National to the newer 2016 BTEC National being somewhat stunted, due to concerns over the examinations and the constant extension to the final enrolment date, have schools & college’s been moving to the new qualification?
Also, have the results of BTEC students been significantly affected by the addition of external examinations to the BTEC?
What Can We Learn?
Looking at the BTEC National results, some obvious things stand out:
- Nearly 62,000 students studied the 2016 BTEC specification. This is still dwarfed by the 232,414 studying the 2010 specification, but most colleges that did switch would still have had their second years on the old specification. That being said, a lot more college’s have stuck with the old specification than move to the new one.
- High grades on the new specification are on average much lower than the old specification. D*-D grades on the Extended Certificate make up 34.3% of the grades achieved. The equivilanton the 2010 spec had 45.4%.
- That being said the new specification actually enjoys a greater pass rate and high grade results increased by 7% from last year on this level of the qualification. U results went from 8.4% down to 2.9%. Possibly as a result of the new N grades added to the exams.
- The 5 most popular BTEC qualifications are business studies, health & social care, applied science, information technology & sport. This holds true on the new specification as well as the old.
- There are still some very severe gender differences within BTEC studies with Information Technology & Sport leaning heavily to male students and Health & Social care towards Female. Applied Science does have a very even split and Business, while having a higher number of male students, is more even than the other subjects mentioned.
The BTEC Level 2 qualification results have also been released. These students were amongst the last cohort we’ll see from key stage 4 students, though the course continues to be run in colleges. There was small fall in both number of students and in the results. It will be interesting to see the effect of the new BTEC Tech Awards that are being taught for the first time this year.
The most popular BTEC First qualifications were the sport, health & social care, business, performing arts and information & creative technology qualifications.
Where From Here?
Obviously a lot of schools and college’s are holding off on the switch to the new specification, I believe many hoping they’ll be able to continue running it until the T-Levels are released (piloted in 2020 with main release in 2021).
That’s probably a little optimistic and we’ll see more and more switch. Generally I think the new qualification brings a lot of benefits to the students and is worth the switch.
To help with the delivery of the 2016 BTEC Level 3 qualifications KnowItAll Ninja has courses for the BTEC National in Information Technology in units:
- Unit 1 Information Technology Systems
- Unit 2 Creating Systems to Manage Information
- Unit 11 Cyber Security & Incident Management
Of course we also have courses for the BTEC Level 2 Information & Creative Technology, covering:
There is also a soon to be released course for the BTEC National Computing qualification covering Unit 1 Principles of Computer Science. This will be followed with a course for Unit 2 Fundamentals of Computer Systems later in the academic year.
The Principles of Computer Science course is expected to be released in early December.
I also have courses in development for the BTEC Tech Award in Digital Information Technology and the BTEC Tech Award in Enterprise. So, keep an eye out for these qualifications coming this academic year.
All these courses will enjoy the presentations, well explained content, key topic videos, quizzes and gamified learning you’re used to from KnowItAllNinja.com.
Also, keep an eye out on the Facebook and Twitter pages as more and more free content is being added to them all the time.
Obviously, 
This website, which is actually linked to in the Cyber Security & Engineered Solutions link above, provides educational games to learn about Cyber Security. These are absolutely fantastic tools for learning a range of threats and prevention mechanisms in a fun and easily digestible way.
The lack of official resources for the Unit 11 Cyber Security & Incident Management controlled assessment is a bigger concern than most units, as it is externally assessed with a 10-hour exam condition activity. These controlled assessments have proven to be a real stumbling block from many students too. However, it is my belief that KnowItAll Ninja can really make a difference in your student’s success.
It’s so important that the Unit 2 Creating Systems to Manage Information controlled assessment goes well for students. This 10 hour exam condition activity has proven to be a difficult stumbling block for students on the BTEC Level 3 Information Technology course. But it’s my belief that KnowItAll Ninja can really make a difference in your students success.