Producing National and Higher National unit specifications is one of the most important things that SQA does, since it directly affects what happens in the classroom. A unit specification (or “unit spec”) is, effectively, the syllabus that teachers follow. It defines the purpose of the unit, the learning outcomes and the assessment.<\/p>\n
Scotland is rightly proud of the way that we produce units. Unlike some countries, we use practising teachers to write them (rather than consultants). At any one point in time a large number of new or revised units will be in production. For example, right now we’re producing several revised units as part of NPA Computer Games Development<\/a>. We asked for volunteers a few weeks ago and chose a college lecturer\u00a0 to write the unit and a school teacher to check (“vet”) the unit. Once the unit is written, it’s checked (“validated”) by my team, before it is published on the SQA website<\/a>, from where teachers download and use it.<\/p>\n So, it’s vital work. And we’re always looking for people to help us. The work is paid but the motivation is usually professional pride in being part of something vital for your subject. Me and my team provide training and on-going support to writers, so don’t worry if you’ve never done it before. We use all sorts of teachers, ranging from the highly experienced to the novice. If you’re interested in finding out more about unit writing, please drop us a message<\/a> and we’ll let you know what opportunities currently exist or follow us on Twitter<\/a> so that you know about future opportunities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Producing National and Higher National unit specifications is one of the most important things that SQA does, since it directly affects what happens in the classroom. A unit specification (or “unit spec”) is, effectively, the syllabus that teachers follow. It defines the purpose of the unit, the learning outcomes and the assessment. Scotland is rightly proud of the way that we produce units. Unlike some countries, we use practising teachers to write them (rather than consultants). At any one point…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2397"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2398,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2397\/revisions\/2398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}