I recently wrote about Helen, who is replacing Hilary, but I want to introduce Liz Sinclair. Helen can’t join my team until the end of November so I needed help during the period between now and then, given that Hilary has moved onto her new post. So Liz will, temporarily, provide cover until Helen can join me. I won’t update my team diagram until Helen joins us. Liz has taken over Hilary’s portfolio so, essentially, e-mail Liz in place of…
Read moreRead more about Welcome to LizAs part of SQA’s regular review process, the HNC/D Computer Games Development is due to be reviewed this year. SQA was the first awarding body in the UK to introduce qualifications in this area. The awards have proven to be popular, with over 1000 pupils in Scottish schools doing the NPA award. When we’re pretty sure that a qualification needs an update, we immediately commence a full review. When we’re not so sure, we begin by “scoping” the changes needed.…
Read moreRead more about Review of HNC/D Computer Games DevelopmentI don’t normally promote third parties, or third party events, on this blog since you come here for qualification news, but I’ll make an exception for this event. RespectMe’s annual conference takes place on 18 November and it sounds very worthwhile, with workshops on bullying, cyberbullying, and homophobia. More information here.
Read moreRead more about Respect MeI attended a lecture by Michael Young on Friday afternoon as part of SQA’s series of research seminars. Michael is a professor at the University of London and has recently written a book about the role of knowledge in schools. The theme of Michael’s lecture was knowledge, and its importance in today’s world. He stressed the importance of conceptual knowledge over “context based knowledge”. Conceptual knowledge, he said, was “generalisable”; context based knowledge was “particular” to a specific set of…
Read moreRead more about Michael Young seminarI recently wrote about the vacant Qualifications Officer post in my team due to Hilary’s recent appointment as Digital Literacy Manager. I’m pleased to let you know that Helen Zhang has been appointed to the position. Helen currently works as a QO in another team, but this post is for a longer (fixed term) period. Helen will formally join my team on 27 November. Helen has worked for SQA since 2010, in various positions including our international team, so is…
Read moreRead more about Welcome to HelenI’ve mentioned previously the recently published Aspect report [PDF] on Computing in colleges. I’ve now had a proper read of the final report. Section 9 lists a number of actions that various agencies should carry out. There are none directly addressed to SQA (the curriculum got a pretty clean bill of health) but there are some that, I think, SQA can play an important role. These are: the role of Mathematics within Computing programmes the achievement rates in the subject area…
Read moreRead more about Aspect report on ComputingAround this time last year, I wrote about local options within HN awards. I also raised local options in my last two update letters. Local options permit colleges to customise (to a certain extent) HN awards to meet local demands. For example, a college with a large software development company nearby may want to add more programming units to an award. We used to change frameworks on an ad hoc basis but the number of requests increased to the extent…
Read moreRead more about Local options within HN awardsI recently appointed Fiona Murnin as lead developer for the review of HNC/D Interactive Media. Fiona is Course Leader at New College Lanarkshire, and also serves as an External Verifier for SQA. Me and Caroline met with Fiona yesterday afternoon to discuss the role of the lead developer and also to create a project plan to revise the existing award. The lead developer is a vital role that encompasses several important tasks, including the writing of the Group Award Specification…
Read moreRead more about HNC/D Interactive MediaA couple of months ago, I posted that I planned to create a list of contacts for the new regional colleges. I also mentioned it in the update letters that have recently been sent to centres. In those letters I ask for each college to nominate a person to be the lead contact for the college. This person would be the subject contact (for vocational Computing awards) and would be used to cascade subject-related information to their colleagues. Prior to regionalisation…
Read moreRead more about Lead person for new collegesI recently posted a message about my annual update letters. In that post I stated that my annual update letters would be sent (via e-mail) to your SQA Co-ordinator for onward distribution to relevant staff. I learned today that that’s not the way things are done any more. SQA Co-ordinators in centres were getting swamped with information, and asked for more to be put into the weekly Centre News, which contains a wide range of SQA-related information about qualifications and…
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