I have to take my hat off to Ofqual for their recent response to an freedom of information request I made to them .. I’m quite impressed because someone has thought it through and not just sent a standard response.

Having seen some payments on their “transparency” data that they have to publish I noted that in the two months of February and March nearly £1.5 million was paid out in relation to various aspects of the development of the National Reference Tests.

nrt 1nrt 2This got me thinking about how much these things are going to cost in their entirety given there is no guarantee that they are going to be of any use in the grading process for the new GCSE’s. I have found a reference to an “estimate” of £3.6 million on the Education Select Committee website and given that the project is in development I know that the payments aren’t going to be linear or of the same size so I submitted a request to Ofqual asking for more information. I have asked for: 

  • A breakdown of the costs incurred to date (including the date of the payment and to whom the payment was made) in the tendering process for this project
  • An additional breakdown of the costs (including the date of the payment and to whom the payment was made) that have been occurred in the specification, development and trialling phases for this project.
  • A breakdown of any additional costs of the project that have been incurred.
  • Details of the full scope of the project.

Well, they’ve only gone and replied in DAYS – there has been no chasing either! *claps*

In fact the response is good in that they have been very open: “the project is still in the ‘development phase’ which includes the trials held in March and their evaluation.  The development phase is due to be completed in mid August 2016” and the correspondence goes on to say “If we were to respond to your request now and provide the information we currently hold the information released would not give a complete picture of the costs.  If you are willing to delay the response to your request until after the end of the development phase we would be able to provide meaningful information on the whole of that stage of the project.”

I should have something meaningful in September … I can’t wait!