What is standardisation?

Standardisation providesgives schools withthe assurance that local authorities’ moderation teams have the required knowledge to completemoderate moderation of KS2 English writing teacher assessment.assessments.

It ensures:

• the consistency and accuracy of teacher assessment and its moderation across England is consistent and accurate
• that local authorities’ moderators for the academic2025 yearto 20242026 toacademic 2025year are familiar with the KS2 English writing framework

Each year, local authorities are required to moderate at least 25% of maintained schools and 25% of academies and participating independent schools that have opted into the local authority’s external KS2 moderation process.

Approval to moderate

All moderators whomust wishpass a standardisation exercise to undertakegain moderationthe activitiesStandards and Testing Agency’s (STA) approval to moderate in the 2025 to 2026 academic yearyear.

Moderators 2024can choose from 3 standardisation exercises. They may attempt up to 20252 exercises and must passsuccessfully acomplete standardisation1 exercise to gain approval to moderate.

Changes to standardisation activities

All standardisation activity will now take place on the StandardsNational Curriculum Assessments Portal (NCA Portal). This includes:

• accessing standardisation training materials
• completing standardisation exercises
• receiving standardisation results and Testing‘approval Agency’sto (STA)moderate’ approvalcertificates
• accessing standardisation exercise commentaries

Setting up access to moderate.the NCA Portal

From Monday 22 September 2025, local authority users with the following roles will receive an email with instructions on how to access and log in to the NCA Portal:

• senior local authority user
• moderation manager
• deputy moderation manager

ThereOnce arethese users set up their accounts, they will be able to manage access for their local authority. The NCA Portal will officially open to schools and local authorities on Tuesday 23 September 2025.

Senior local authority users should ensure that all local authority staff with responsibilities relating to primary assessment have the correct access to the NCA Portal.

Moderation managers should ensure that all moderators who will participate in standardisation exercises during the 2025 to 2026 academic year have access to the NCA Portal at the appropriate time.

Completing an exercise on the NCA Portal

Each standardisation exercise will be available for completion on the NCA Portal during a specific period.

Date	Exercise
Monday 3 November to Friday 14 November 2025	Standardisation exercise 1
Monday 5 January to Friday 16 January 2026	Standardisation exercise 2
Monday 9 February to Friday 27 February 2026	Standardisation exercise 3

When each exercise becomes available on the NCA Portal, registered moderators will be automatically notified via email.

The standardisation exercises are now available online, however, local authorities should continue their usual standardisation practices. This means moderation managers are responsible for:

• coordinating moderator participation in totalan exercise according to local authority arrangements
• ensuring that moderators access and eachcomplete moderatorthe isexercises allowedindividually, under controlled conditions at a maximumdate and time the local authority specifies

Moderation managers and moderators can access the standardisation exercises by logging into the NCA Portal and navigating to the ‘Standardisation’ page.

To complete a standardisation exercise on the NCA Portal, moderators should:

• access the exercise at a specific time and in a suitable monitored environment as instructed by their moderation manager
• start the exercise and navigate through the pupil scripts on screen
• award a standard of 2attainment for each pupil collection via the drop-down list
• submit their answers to complete the exercise and send for automatic marking

The system will track exercise attempts acrossto ensure that no moderator can complete more than 2 exercises.

The standardisation exercise materials will also be available to download from the 3NCA exercisesPortal should local authorities wish to pass.carry out paper-based standardisation offline. If local authorities take this approach, they should ensure individual moderators provide their responses for each pupil collection within the exercise on the NCA Portal. Otherwise, they will not receive their results or the ‘approval to moderate’ certificate.

ModeratorRelease trainingof exercise commentaries and results

Self-guidedStandardisation trainingexercise materialsattempts will be automatically marked on the NCA Portal based on the commentaries STA provides.

There are 3 potential result outcomes which will be communicated to moderators via automatic email from the NCA Portal.  

Result	Description
Successful	No further exercises required — approved to moderate for the 2025 to 2026 academic year, moderator can download approval certificate from the NCA Portal
Unsuccessful	One more attempt available — moderator was unsuccessful but can complete one further exercise on the Primarythe AssessmentNCA GatewayPortal
Unsuccessful	No (PAG)further attempts allowed — moderator was unsuccessful in two exercises

The exercise results and commentaries will be released on a phased basis across five days:

• on the Monday after each exercise window closes, moderation managers can access the results and commentaries — this gives them enough time to discuss outcomes with moderators before the system releases the results
• on the Wednesday after each exercise window closes, moderators can access their results and commentaries, including the ‘approval to moderate’ certificate, if they are successful

The commentary and results release dates for each exercise can be found below within the standardisation and training timeline.

Once Theythe standardisation exercise window opens, local authorities will be able to access a report on the NCA Portal showing moderator participation, pass and fail rates for their area. This will help local authorities confirm whether they have notrecruited changedenough sincemoderators lastfor year,the but2025 to 2026 academic year.

Large language model pilot

STA is piloting the use of large language models to help youcreate workstandardisation exercise 3 in the 2025 to 2026 academic year. Details of the pilot were communicated to moderation managers in July 2025.

The purpose of the pilot is to explore whether large language models can help overcome ongoing challenges with themstandardisation weexercise haveproduction, publishedincluding asourcing trainingsufficient contentsscripts pagefrom schools and historicreducing associated costs.

Taking part in the pilot is optional. STA will only use the materials developed with the assistance of large language models to evaluate moderators’ understanding of the KS2 English writing teacher assessment framework.

Moderator training

The NCA Portal provides self-guided standardisation training materials for key stage 1 and KS2, trainingwith materialsbuilt-in onguidance theto PAG.help local authorities navigate them.

Additional training videos are available onon STA’s STA’s YouTube playlist.

Examples of pupils’ work to support teachers’ assessment of English writing at the end of KS2 are available on Teacher assessment exemplification: KS2 English writing.

We will not publish any further training or exemplification materials for the academic2025 yearto 20242026 toacademic 2025.year.

Local authorities can use the training materials to support their moderator training. We recommend that localtraining authoritiesis deliverdelivered training to their moderators before they complete the standardisation exercise, preferably on separate days.

Standardisation and training timeline

Dates	Activities
From Monday 422 September 2025	Moderation managers set up NCA Portal access for all moderators who will participate in a standardisation exercise
Monday 3 November to Friday 1514 November 20242025	Standardisation exercise 1 available to all moderators on the NCA Portal for completion
From Monday 43 November to2025	Report Fridayavailable 15on Novemberthe 2024	ModerationNCA Portal for moderation managers to returnreview theirstandardisation responsesparticipation fromrates, exerciseoutcomes 1and toapproved STAmoderators for marking2025 to 2026
Monday 1817 November 2024to Friday 21 November 2025	Standardisation exercise 1 commentaries and results available on the PAGNCA Portal for moderation managers
Monday 1817 November to Friday 2228 November 20242025	ModerationStandardisation managersexercise 1 moderator feedback survey available for completion on the NCA Portal
Wednesday 19 November to markFriday pool21 andNovember lead2025	Participating moderators’moderators responsesreceive fromemail notification to access standardisation exercise 1 commentaries and submitresults completionon numbersthe NCA Portal, including the ‘approval to STAmoderate’ certificate, if successful
Monday 65 January to Friday 1716 January 20252026	Standardisation exercise 2 available toon the NCA Portal for completion by all moderators who did not complete or were unsuccessful in exercise 1
Monday 619 January to Friday 1723 January 20252026	ModerationStandardisation managersexercise to2 returncommentaries theirand responsesresults fromavailable exerciseon 2the toNCA STAPortal for markingmoderation managers
Monday 2019 January 2025to Friday 30 January 2026	Standardisation exercise 2 commentariesmoderator feedback survey available for completion on the PAGNCA Portal
MondayWednesday 2021 January to Friday 2423 January 20252026	ModerationParticipating managersmoderators toreceive markemail poolnotification andto leadaccess moderators’standardisation responses from exercise 2 commentaries and submitresults completionon numbersthe NCA Portal, including the ‘approval to STAmoderate’ certificate, if successful
Monday 109 February to Friday 2127 February 20252026	Standardisation exercise 3 available toon the NCA Portal for completion by all moderators who did not complete or were unsuccessful in either exercise 1 or 2 (not both)
Monday 102 FebruaryMarch to Friday 216 FebruaryMarch 20252026	ModerationStandardisation managers to return their responses from exercise 3 tocommentaries STAand forresults marking
Mondayavailable 24on Februarythe 2025	StandardisationNCA exercisePortal 3for commentariesmoderation available on the PAGmanagers
Monday 242 FebruaryMarch to Friday 2813 FebruaryMarch 20252026	ModerationStandardisation managersexercise to3 markmoderator poolfeedback andsurvey leadavailable moderators’for responses from exercise 3 and submit completion numberson tothe STANCA Portal
MondayWednesday 244 FebruaryMarch to Friday 76 March 20252026	ModerationParticipating managersmoderators toreceive submitemail namesnotification ofto allaccess moderators who passed standardisation acrossexercise the 3 exercisescommentaries toand STA
Mondayresults 17on Marchthe 2025	STANCA toPortal, shareincluding blankthe KS2 ‘approval to moderate’ certificatescertificate, withif local authorities for the academic year 2024 to 2025successful

Contact us

If you have questions about local authority moderation or moderator training and standardisation, you can call the national curriculum assessments helpline on 0300 303 3013.