Information you need to submit student entries

The information below will help you to complete the entry fields in Centre Services while you’re entering a student for our exams.

Make sure you complete it carefully:  it’ll take longer for us to process your entry if anything is missing or wrong.

• Candidate number.
• Surname and forename.
• Date of birth.
• Candidate status.
• Unique candidate identifier (UCI).
• ULN – you can leave this blank.
• UPN – you can leave this blank.
• Entry code and exam series.
• Carry forward controlled non-exam assessment results (see your qualification specification for more details).

We don’t provide candidate numbers; you will need to create a number for each student at the beginning of the academic year. Please use these candidate numbers on all record and assessment forms.

A candidate number is always four digits long, from 0001 to 9999. It’s best if you use the same number for a candidate for all awarding bodies.

Where entries have been submitted via Centre Services candidate numbers cannot be changed within a series. If you don’t add a candidate number to an entry, we will not be able to process the entry.

We recommend that you enter your students with their full legal name including middle names, so that we can verify against suitable identification such as a birth certificate, passport or driver’s license. We will use this name on the student’s printed certificate.  Please note that it may cause problems with employers and centres of education if the name on certificates does not match other identification.

A student’s name can be up to 40 characters in length, including hyphens, colons, spaces or apostrophes. The format is SURNAME: FORENAME(S) AND/OR INITIAL(S).

• BURNS: EMMA KAY
• BARBER-DOHERTY: B K LORNA
• DE LA BLANCHE: JULIE

If you need to abbreviate a name to fit in 40 character limit, email [email protected] when you make the entry to inform that their full name will need to be amended for their results certificate.

If a student does not have a forename, put the colon at the end of the complete name, eg:

• TANG PO HENG:

If you’re submitting entries through EDI, see the formats for the exchange of exam related data about acceptable characters.

You must provide a date of birth for all students. We cannot issue a certificate if the date of birth is missing from the student’s entry.

The required format is:

• DD/MM/YY – for entries made through EDI and basedata e.g. 01/01/22
• DD/MMM/YYYY – for entries made through Centre Services e.g. 01/JAN/2022

The status code tells us whether a student is at a school or is a private candidate:

• Use C for a centre student: any part-time or full-time student enrolled at your school
• Use P for a private candidate

Every student has one 13-character code that’s unique to them. It’s used to collect results for each student across time and different exam boards, schools or colleges. All students need a UCI. You need to make sure that you add a UCI to every entry you make.

Before you create a UCI for a student, check that they definitely don’t already have one. If they do, keep using it – do not create a second one.

If you’re making entries through EDI, your management information system (MIS) should be able to create a UCI automatically or find out a student’s existing UCI. It goes in positions 60-72 in the entries and amendments detail record.

Our entries systems use the same principles as awarding organisations based in the UK, the JCQ website contains in-depth information about UCIs

If you’re making entries in Centre Services, you’ll need to create a UCI manually. You can use the information in this document (PDF) to do that.

If you find out that a student has more than one UCI, let us know as soon as possible: fill in the UCI merge request form (DOC) and send it to [email protected]. In the meantime you should update your system to the previous UCI.

Entry code

Our entry code book has entry codes for every qualification.

There are different types of entry code for each subject. They are:

• an entry code for the overall award (generally four characters long – please note, this is different to the specification code)
• an entry code for each unit, option or tier (generally four characters long).

You need to make sure each student is entered with all the relevant entry codes that you want results for – ie: the overall award and the individual units or components.

Exam series 

An ‘exam series’ is the period or session when a whole series of exams take place, for example, June 2021. The series code for OxfordAQA International Examinations, summer 2021 is ‘6X21 or 6Y21’. You’ll need to know your series, because it will have its own basedata files, entries closing date and results date.

Exam series codes are four characters long. For example, the GCSE series code for June 2021 is 6Y21:

• 6 is the month (1–9 for January–September, A–C for October–December)
• Y is the set of qualifications
• 21 is the year.