The Sector Panel for Computing & IT met today. The Panel meets once per year to provide advice and support to me and my team about strategic developments in the sector. There was an excellent attendance today, with 18 people attending, representing schools, colleges, universities, training providers, employers, IT vendors, and professional bodies. We have recently expanded the membership of the Panel to try to get more diverse views, and today’s meeting certainly achieved that goal. There was lively debate…
I’ve mentioned before that SQA was in the process of re-organising Verification Groups (VGs) as a result of a report from the Royal Society about the past and future of the subject area. That report made a strong recommendation that Computing should be viewed as three distinct, but linked, subject areas: Digital Literacy, Information Technology and Computer Science. It also recommended that awarding bodies across the UK adopt this taxonomy. SQA was happy to follow that advice. The first tangible…
Since I was updating the portflio diagram, I thought that it would be a good idea to also update the team digram. This is another cut-out-and-keep document since it provides important information about who you should contact along with their contact information. You can download it here. You will get a much faster reply if you use this diagram to contact the right person.
I updated the portfolio diagram today. This diagram summarises the portfolio of vocational Computing awards, ranging from stand-alone National Units at SCQF Level 3 to Professional Development Awards at SCQF Level 8. The diagram also illustrates the recently created/revised awards (such as the new HND Computer Science) and the awards currently being reviewed (such as PC Passport). You may want to download and print this diagram to aid your future planning. The “Useful links” box on the right provides links to web…
The centre satisfaction survey for 2013 (session 2012/13) is now open. We’ve been doing an annual survey for a couple of years now and we use the results to try to improve the service that we provoide to centres. Although we don’t share the results publically, we do carefully consider them and try to identify our strengths and weaknesses, so that we can try to keep doing the good things and improve the not-so-good things. The survey only takes five…
Welcome back for another year. I won’t pretend I don’t miss my long summer holidays (which I enjoyed for 22 years) but there is the consolation of being able to choose when I take my holidays. The big challenge this year is the introduction of the new HN awards. We recently validated a new HNC and four new HNDs, including a brand new HND in Computer Science, and lots of you will be involved in delivering one or more of…
Last week I blogged the link to a vendor survey that we have compiled to gain some feedback from centres who are offering vendor certifications alongside SQA qualifications. Please take a few moments to complete the survey if you have not yet done so.
Our HN awards have had something called “local options” for a long time. This allows centres to effectively add any units they like to the awards (although the number of credits is capped). These were originally conceived to help centres customise the awards to their specific local circumstances. For example, a particular college with a large local employer may have a very good reason to add an “unusual” unit to their specific HN award. Computing is now one of the…
I’ve mentioned previously that the team take time out once per year to reflect on the past year and consider the coming year. We normally do this around summer time since it is quieter for us at this time of the year. We had our annual meeting yesterday. In the past we have come up with some good ideas at these meetings. For example, we decided to use Twitter a few years ago and more recently we agreed to do…
We have compiled a survey to gain feedback from centres who are offering both SQA qualifications and vendor courses so that we can monitor how they are being delivered and to promote awareness of the new approach to vendor within HNC/D Computing awards. This survey is not exclusive to HN awards. This is open to all SQA approved centres (FE, HE, Training Providers etc) who are delivering SQA qualifications (HNC/HNC, PDA, NC, NPA, SVQ, CBQ) in conjunction with vendor courses.…
