Essential Digital Skills delivery support

You can find all the relevant qualification information and support guidance for Essential Digital Skills here:

NCFE Entry Level 3 Essential Digital Skills – 603/7119/5

NCFE Level 1 Essential Digital Skills – 603/7118/3

The information on these pages will take you through to the qualification information pages, where you can access:

• Qualification specification
• Support handbook
• Factsheet
• Assessor guidance
• Learner guidance
• Teaching resources

New EDSQ assessments are periodically released throughout the year.  Results for a new paper will be released following the awarding process.  The date for awarding is chosen to ensure we have a large enough volume of learners to provide us with enough evidence to set pass marks reliably and will typically be 6-7 weeks after the launch of the paper.

If an exact pass mark is not established during the awarding meeting, learners who are marked close to the grade boundary may be subject to follow-up awarding, which will typically be completed within 1 week.

Our sample assessments are available in-browser and are accessible using a weblink. There is no need to schedule or use a keycode. 

All content within the sample assessments is modelled on live assessments. Mark schemes for all sample papers are provided to allow centres to mark on completion. This allows you to identify learners’ strengths and weaknesses to ensure individualised skills plans can be made using the outcomes of the practice assessments. 

In-browser practice assessments allow learners to gain familiarity with the NCFE onscreen platform. Please note that these tests are simulation only, and therefore learners will not be able to fully complete the uploading of documents to the platform, as they will in relevant tasks when sitting a Live assessment. 

Note-If you wish to mark learner responses from an in-browser practice assessment, responses will need to be captured at the end of the sitting or screenshots throughout to facilitate this. Any learner responses inputted into an in-browser assessment cannot be retrieved once the browser has been closed. 

You may also wish to consider our initial and diagnostic assessment tools to support your learner’s journey.  

Please find our sample assessment papers below:

Entry Level 3 supporting documentation

• Assessor feedback to learner
• IQA feedback to assessor
• Additional instructions
• Mark scheme
• Sample assessments

Level 1 supporting documentation

• Assessor feedback to learner
• IQA feedback to assessor
• Additional instructions
• Witness observation record
• Mark scheme
• Sample assessments

Watch our EDSQ onboarding webinar where we focus on these key areas:

• Assessment structure
• Content
• Delivery
• Support available for customers

If you have any queries regarding the webinars, please contact: [email protected]

EDSQ onboarding webinars

Please book onto one of our drop-in clinics if you have any further questions.

EDSQ drop-in clinics

Content coming soon 

EDSQ CPD webinars

Content coming soon. Please visit our EDSQ and FSQ playlist.

Essential Digital Skills on-demand webinars

If you have any queries regarding the webinars, please contact: [email protected]

Provider Development team

Our new Essential Digital Skills qualifications are now live.

These qualifications are designed for adults with little or no prior experience of using digital devices or the internet at entry level and for adults with some experience of using digital devices and the internet but lacking secure basic skills at level 1.

With these being brand new qualifications NCFE have recognised the need to support Tutors and Assessors in the delivery and therefore are providing free support from our Provider Development Team to centres.

Whether you are a new or existing centre, when you get approval for Essential Digital Skills you will be contacted for a free on boarding experience and will receive 3 free consultations through the first 12 months of delivery.

EDSQ standardisation

This recording of our EDSQ standardisation webinar will help assessors to standardise their marking of the essential digital skills qualification.

The team also create content to support delivery and carry out regular CPD webinars aimed at Tutors and Assessors, details of which are below.

Portal and Surpass

A live demonstration of what the portal looks like and how you can register and book learners onto the Essential Digital Skills Qualification. Followed by a live demonstration of Surpass - what centres can see on Surpass after they have registered and booked learners on the portal.

Access now

EQA

This short recording is aimed at tutors, assessors and IQA’s of the EDSQ, and will provide useful hints and tips from our External Quality assurance team

Access now

NCFE recognise the challenges of delivering a brand new qualification and have worked hard to ensure we can support your delivery for go live. We have created a series of resources that can support Tutors in delivering the subject content and that learners can work through in a sequenced order.

You can access all teaching and learning resources from the qualification information pages under the “Teaching Materials” tab. Below is an outline of what resources are available for these qualifications and you can find out more in our learning resource guide.

Schemes of Work

Downloadable for free

Each Essential Digital Skills qualification has a set of five schemes of work. Each scheme of work links directly to the five sections in the qualification. You are free to change the order of sessions to suit your learners' requirements and your preferred order for delivering the different qualification section the schemes of work typically have sessions that 120 minutes, excluding any breaks. A few sessions are more than 120 minutes; however they are clearly marked in the Scheme of Work

Digital Resource Pack

Downloadable for £900 (inc VAT)

The Digital Resource Pack is an all-in-one digital package of resources for tutors to support learners.

The package includes:

• 23 sessions of engaging PowerPoints that cover all learning outcomes. All PowerPoint slides can be altered to allow flexibility for tutors to make more learner cohort-specific examples, weblinks, etc.
• Associated worksheets and supporting materials for the sessions.
• A digital learner workbook that can be shared with all your learners as a great reference point and place to save examples of their work. 

This digital resource pack is versatile and editable and is an easy way to support classroom delivery.

This pack combined with the freely downloadable Schemes of Work complete the set. These detailed schemes of work include session timings, suggested additional links to videos, articles and useful websites. 

Centres purchasing this digital package of resources can use them with an unlimited number of tutors and registered learners. The one-off fee will include any updates and revisions to the learning materials if required.

A sample pack is free to download.

Resource Pack

Downloadable for £144 (inc VAT)

This classroom resource pack contains 23 PowerPoints, worksheets and where relevant, spreadsheets and images to support in classroom delivery.

The PowerPoints are provided with a suggested order of the session that will match the freely downloadable Scheme of Work. You are free to change the order to suit your learners' requirements.  For example, there are suggested starter activities and can be completed either before or after outlining the session’s learning outcomes. 

The PowerPoint slides can be altered providing flexibility for tutors to make more learner cohort-specific examples, weblinks, etc. An example might be that a local website, community forum, social media page is relevant to a specific group of learners and is a great opportunity to provide local application of the learning. 

A sample pack is free to download.

Initial assessment, digital skills diagnostic and resources.

Providers will be required to carry out a thorough initial assessment to determine the individual’s current level for Essential Digital Skills.

With this in mind we have developed a new Essential Digital Skills diagnostic assessment based on the new national standards for Essential Digital Skills within our Skills Builder platform.

NCFE have worked alongside the digital subject matter experts who developed the national standards for the Department for Education, to make sure we provide the most accurate initial assessment and resources that will help support learners and apprentices on the most appropriate digital programme.

The new digital entitlement will support learners with no or low digital skills. New national standards have been developed for Essential Digital Skills and will replace legacy ICT standards. These standards will also inform the development of new subject content for digital Functional Skills qualifications, available for first teaching from 2021.

New topics within the Essential Digital Skills standards include:

• Using devices
• Finding and evaluating information
• Managing and storing information
• Identifying and solving technical problems
• Developing digital skills

The new Essential Digital Skills offer will be available at Entry Level and Level 1. This will enable learners to develop the digital skills they need for a range of purposes.

Once the learner has completed their initial/diagnostic assessment you can then choose to access the supporting resources upon which an individual skills plan will be created for your learner.

The Skills Builder initial assessment for Essential Digital Skills and subject content closely reflects the new national standards and covers a wider range of skills in comparison to legacy ICT qualifications, reflecting the significant advances in digital technology and its application.

Find out more about our new Essential Digital Skills initial assessment and learning resources by contacting [email protected]. If you wish to book a demonstration of the Skills Builder platform, complete the enquiry form.

In line with our charitable purpose, we’re now facilitating termly virtual meet ups to support you with your delivery and allow you to share best practice from your own experience with English, maths and digital skills. 

Pease visit our Teach, Share, Transform page to register.