Does your centre offer PC Passport Intermediate or Internet Safety ? If so you may be interested in acquiring free copies of the Leckie and Leckie textbooks that accompany these qualifications. We have surplus stocks of these books that will be of great use to delivering centres. We currently have approximately 60 copies of the following books that will be distributed on a first come first served basis: Intermediate PC Passport ISBN 978-1-84372-591-6 Internet Safety ISBN 978-1-84372-578-7 Please e-mail hnqualifications@sqa.org.uk…

Qualifications Support Team meeting for NC/PDAs

The Qualifications Support Team (QST) for the NC and NPA awards in my area met yesterday afternoon in the Marriott Hotel in Glasgow. The purpose of this committee is to monitor the operation of NC/NPA awards, and advise me about what needs to be done to support centres. Members include teachers, lecturers and representatives of support agencies. The main discussion points at yesterday’s meeting were PC Passport and the development of the new NPAs. The new PC Passport is being…

Digital Literacy

I’ve been doing some work on Digital Literacy this morning. This qualification is a National Progression Award (one of a suite of 17 that are available or we’re working on) that should be appealing to a wide range of students. You can find out more here or contact Shirley (0845-213-5474) if you want to speak with someone.

Vocational Computing awards

I’ve been working on a diagram that summarises the awards and progression routes in my area today. Discover Simple, Private Sharing at Drop.io It provides a pretty handy summary of the vocational qualifications available in the Computing/IT sector. It can be downloaded here [PDF].

More on Computing performance indicators

I was invited to SQA’s Qualifications Management Team (QMT) meeting this morning to discuss the on-going problems with uptake, retention and pass rates in HNC/D Computing. At last week’s meeting of Computing for Change, the curriculum was identified as one of the problem areas and QMT agreed to support me in any way they can to try to address any curricular problems that need to be addressed, such as reducing the assessment load and identifying specific units with low pass…

SQA and Microsoft

Microsoft was our original DIVA partner, and I met with the Scottish Lead Centre Manager (Deryck Nutley) this morning to get an update on changes to the Microsoft curriculum. It is a challenge for SQA’s small team to keep up with vendor changes and sometimes our qualifications fall out of sync with industry awards. This was a case in point. Microsoft has recently updated its curriculum to encompass Vista and Windows Server 2008, and Deryck outlined the changes needed to…

Further HN Interactive e-Learning Materials

We are in the process of finalising another batch of interactive e-learning materials which will cover the following HN Units: DF9T 34 Internetworking Concepts 1: Development and Delivery ConceptsDF9V 34 Internetworking Concepts 2: Security and Business ConceptsDF9R 35 Network Infrastructure 1: Implementation and ManagementDG00 35 Network Infrastructure 2: Planning and MaintenanceF1XA 34 Computing: PC Hardware and Operating Systems EssentialsF1X9 34 Computing: PC Hardware and Operating Systems Support I shall post a message to the blog as soon as these packs…

Computing for Change Steering Group

Regular readers will be aware of the concerns about low performance indicators for HN Computing (and related subjects) since it has been mentioned many times on this blog. Recently, Scotland’s Colleges contacted every centre to ask if anyone wanted to serve on a Steering Group to look at the issues surrounding the relatively low recruitment, retention and success rates. As a result, the first meeting of a new Steering Group was held yesterday afternoon at Stow College. It was a…

Safer Internet Day

Today is Safer Internet Day, a day designated by the EU to focus on online safety. As most of you will know, SQA produced the first national qualification in Europe on Internet safety, which has proven to be very popular in Scottish schools and colleges. Some schools offer the unit to every pupil in a year group (for example, Airdrie Academy offers it to every second year pupil) and some colleges (such as Aberdeen College) offer it as part of…

Post-validation meeting for HND Interactive Media

I met with Mark McPhee last night (Mark is the lead developer for the HND Interactive Media award). It was an online meeting, using Skype. We went over the conditions and recommendations imposed by the validation panel, and we agreed who was going to do what to ensure that the conditions were addressed. Most of the conditions can be quickly dealt with (such as clarifying the access statement) but one or two will take a little longer (such as revising…