Teacher assessment moderation: standardisation and training process

Information for local authorities on training and standardisation for moderators of key stages 2 (KS2) English writing.

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

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.

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

All moderators must pass a standardisation exercise to gain the Standards and Testing Agency’s (STA) approval to moderate in the academic year 2026 to 2027.

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.

Existing local authority account managers 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 academic year 2026 to 2027 have access to the NCA Portal at the appropriate time. Moderation managers should delete all user accounts for moderators who no longer require access to the NCA Portal.

Full instructions on how to access the portal, assign roles, view permissions and manage user accounts are detailed in the guidance on how to access the NCA Portal.