Regular readers will know that we’ve been involved, along with some other subjects, in a big development programme called “Next Generation Higher National Qualifications”. This seems a good time to update you about what’s been happening.<\/p>\n
The “Next Gen” programme is more than updating the contents of Higher National Qualifications (HNQs) — although it certainly does that. It redesigns them in quite fundamental ways and introduces qualification grading (“Achieved”, “Merit” or “Distinction”).<\/p>\n
Four existing qualifications have been updated and one new qualification has been introduced. These are:<\/p>\n
This has involved developing 70 new or revised Higher National units, ranging from Artificial Intelligence<\/em> to Probability & Statistics<\/em>.<\/p>\n HNC Computing was piloted last year in two Scottish colleges and this year HND Networking &\u00a0 Cloud Infrastructure and HND Software Development will be piloted. The purpose of piloting is to test the qualifications before making them more widely available to centres. We learned a lot from last year’s pilot and made changes to HNC Computing as a result. I’m sure this year’s pilots will be equally informative.<\/p>\n