Pearson Set Assignments: what they are and how V1/V2 work

For a growing set of units, Pearson doesn't leave the assignment to the centre — it issues the brief itself. These Pearson Set Assignments (PSAs) come with version numbers and validity windows that trip up even experienced teams.

What a PSA is

A complete, ready-to-use assignment brief written by Pearson: scenario, tasks, and the full criteria grid on the final page. Centres deliver it as issued for internal assessment — you do not rewrite the tasks, and the criteria are Pearson's verbatim. For supported units, using the PSA is the assessment route; check your specification's unit pages for which units this applies to.

V1 and V2: same law, different world

PSAs typically ship in two versions each cycle. The crucial fact, confirmed across real briefs:

The assessment criteria are identical in V1 and V2. What changes is the sector context and scenario the learner works in — the business, the data, the situation.

Consequences worth writing down:

• A "version change" is never a criteria change. If someone tells you V2 "added a criterion", they are misreading — check the final-page grid of each version side by side.
• Marking standards carry across versions. The same criterion asks for the same verb depth whatever the scenario — so a checker tool calibrated to the criteria works on both versions unchanged.
• Evidence must use the chosen version's data. Because the scenario rotates, a learner answering V1's business in a V2 cohort (or mixing contexts) produces evidence that satisfies nothing.

The validity window

PSAs are issued annually — typically June — and are valid until the end of August the following year. A brief from last cycle is not usable for new submissions. Three failure modes:

1. Teaching to an expired brief because a scheme of work wasn't refreshed. Fix: brief expiry dates go in the department calendar.
2. Trusting filenames. Files get renamed; the version is printed on the brief's cover. Trust the cover, not the filename.
3. Mixing versions across a cohort. Pick per cohort, record it in the assessment plan, and make resubmissions use the same version as the original (resubmission rules).

Using PSAs well

Because the PSA fixes tasks and criteria, the centre's remaining decisions are delivery and quality: when it's scheduled, how evidence is collected, and how decisions are recorded. The final-page grid is your marking scheme — verbatim, authoritative, and already digitised in our criteria library per unit. And when you want every criterion in a PSA-checked batch read against that grid before IV, that's precisely what checkb.tech does — V1 or V2, both are supported per batch.

FAQ

Do PSAs apply to every unit?

No — unit-level specification pages list the assessment route per unit: PSA, centre-devised internal assignment, or external exam. The business specifications mix all three.

Can we tweak a PSA task for accessibility?

Reasonable adjustments are allowed, but the tasks and criteria are not editable. Record any adjustment; don't rewrite the assessment.