Moderation is the process of validating the adviser’s assessment of the young people’s work. Young people work towards their Arts Award with a trained Arts Award adviser. The adviser is the primary internal assessor for young people’s work.
Moderation involves a Trinity moderator looking at a representative sample of the young people's work to validate the adviser's assessment. The purpose of the moderation is to ensure that the adviser has marked the work accurately and that there is consistency to the marking.
Trinity operates an External Quality Assurance model which means that your centre will not be moderated every time you enter young people for Arts Award.
Once you enter young people for Arts Award, we will notify you via email to confirm whether your centre has been selected to be moderated and provide information about next steps within the following timeframes:
Moderation will take place online via our portfolio submission platform. Trinity will select and request only a sample of portfolios across the entire cohort to be submitted for moderation, and not the portfolios of all young people entered for Arts Award.
Centres need to prepare the requested sample portfolios in digital format and complete an evidence locator form for each portfolio selected in the sample. The evidence locator form must signpost the moderator to the specific evidence provided for each part of the award within the portfolio.
Centres must submit the selected portfolios and accompanying evidence locator forms via our online portfolio submission platform within two weeks of the notification email.
We will share with you the moderation result and moderator feedback approximately within four weeks and issue certificates within eight weeks of the date you entered young people for Arts Award. Find out more about Arts Award certificates.
Please read our Best Practice Guidebook and the Arts Award Qualifications and Adviser - Training Terms and Conditions (updated: May 2025).