What is standardisation?

Standardisation gives schools the assurance that local authorities’ moderation teams have the required knowledge to moderate KS2 English writing teacher assessments.

It ensures:

• teacher assessment and its moderation across England is consistent and accurate
• that local authorities’ moderators for the academic year 20262025 to 20272026 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 must pass a standardisation exercise to gain the Standards and Testing Agency’s (STA) approval to moderate in the academic year 2025 to 2026.

Moderators can choose from 3 standardisation exercises. They may attempt up to 2 exercises and must successfully complete 1 exercise to gain approval to moderate.

Changes to standardisation activities

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

• accessing standardisation training materials
• completing standardisation exercises
• receiving standardisation results and ‘approval to moderate’ certificates
• accessing standardisation exercise commentaries

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Accessing the NCA Portal

ExistingSenior local authority accountusers managers should ensure that all local authority staff with responsibilities relating to primary assessmentassessments have the correct access to the NCA Portal.

Moderation managers should ensure that all moderators who will participate in standardisation exercises during the academic year 20262025 to 20272026 have access to the NCA Portal at the appropriate time.

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Please note that users whose passwords are more than 365 days old will be required to update them.

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 23 November to Friday 1314 November 20262025	Standardisation exercise 1
Monday 115 January to Friday 2216 January 20272026	Standardisation exercise 2
Monday 89 February to Friday 2627 February 20272026	Standardisation exercise 3

When each exercise becomes available on the NCA Portal, registeredlocal moderatorsauthority users with moderation manager permissions will be automatically notified via email.

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

• co-ordinatingcoordinating moderator participation in an exercise according to local authority arrangements
• ensuring that moderators access and complete the exercises individually, under controlled conditions at a date and time the local authority specifies

Moderation managers and moderators can access the standardisation exercises by loggingsigning 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 attainment 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 to ensure that no moderator can complete more than 2 exercises.

The standardisation exercise materials will also be available to preview and download from the NCA Portal should local authorities wish to 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.certificate, if successful.

Release of exercise commentaries and results

Standardisation exercise attempts will be automatically marked againston the NCA Portal based on the commentaries STA’s approved judgements.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 academic year 20262025 to 2027,2026, 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 NCA Portal
Unsuccessful	No further attempts allowed –— moderator was unsuccessful in two exercises

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

• 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 the 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 recruited enough moderators for the academic year 20262025 to 2027.2026.

UseLarge language model pilot

STA is piloting the use of large language models

Following ato pilothelp create standardisation exercise 3 in the academic year 2025 to 2026,2026. standardisationDetails exercisesof 2the andpilot 3were willcommunicated beto developedmoderation bymanagers STAin withJuly support from large language models.2025.

The purpose of the pilot wasis to explore whether large language models can help overcome ongoing challenges with standardisation exercise production, including sourcing sufficient scripts from schools and reducing associated costs.

Taking Detailspart ofin the pilot wereis communicatedoptional. to moderation managers in July 2025. As in previous years, all participating moderators will have the opportunity to provide feedback on each standardisation exercise.

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 (KS1) and KS2, with built-in guidance to help local authorities navigate them.

Additional training videos are available on 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 academic year 20262025 to 2027.2026.

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

Standardisation and training timeline

Dates	Activities
From Monday 222 September 2025	Moderation managers set up NCA Portal access for all moderators who will participate in a standardisation exercise
Monday 3 November to Friday 1314 November 20262025	Standardisation exercise 1 available to moderators on the NCA Portal for completion
From Monday 163 November 20262025	Report available on the NCA Portal for moderation managers to review standardisation participation rates, outcomes and approved moderators for 20262025 to 20272026
From Monday 1617 November 2026to Friday 21 November 2025	Standardisation exercise 1 commentaries and results available on the NCA Portal for moderation managers
Monday 1617 November to Friday 2728 November 20262025	Standardisation exercise 1 moderator feedback survey available for completion on the NCA Portal
Wednesday 1819 November 2026to Friday 21 November 2025	Participating moderators receive email notification to access standardisation exercise 1 commentaries and results on the NCA Portal, including the ‘approval to moderate’ certificate, if successful
Monday 115 January to Friday 2216 January 20272026	Standardisation exercise 2 available on the NCA Portal for completion by all moderators who did not complete or were unsuccessful in exercise 1
From Monday 2519 January 2027to Friday 23 January 2026	Standardisation exercise 2 commentaries and results available on the NCA Portal for moderation managers
Monday 2519 January to Friday 530 FebruaryJanuary 20272026	Standardisation exercise 2 moderator feedback survey available for completion on the NCA Portal
Wednesday 2721 January 2027to Friday 23 January 2026	Participating moderators receive email notification to access standardisation exercise 2 commentaries and results on the NCA Portal, including the ‘approval to moderate’ certificate, if successful
Monday 89 February to Friday 2627 February 20272026	Standardisation exercise 3 available on the NCA Portal for completion by all moderators who did not complete or were unsuccessful in either exercise 1 or 2
From Monday 12 March 2027to Friday 6 March 2026	Standardisation exercise 3 commentaries and results available on the NCA Portal for moderation managers
Monday 12 March to Friday 1213 March 20272026	Standardisation exercise 3 moderator feedback survey available for completion on the NCA Portal
Wednesday 34 March 2027to Friday 6 March 2026	Participating moderators receive email notification to access standardisation exercise 3 commentaries and results on the NCA Portal, including the ‘approval to moderate’ certificate, if successful

Contact us

If you have questions about localmoderation, authority moderation or moderator training andor standardisation, youplease cancontact call the national curriculum assessments helpline: