{"id":4458,"date":"2026-08-27T15:01:52","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T14:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/?p=4458"},"modified":"2026-09-07T10:52:29","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T09:52:29","slug":"support-for-new-higher-national-qualifications","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/support-for-new-higher-national-qualifications\/","title":{"rendered":"Support for new Higher National Qualifications"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/support-network-for-teachers\/\">recently posted<\/a> about online support for vocational Computing qualifications such as NPA Cyber Security and National Certificate in Computing with Digital Media. We&#8217;ve also created a dedicated Microsoft Team to support new Higher National Qualifications (HNQs), developed as part of Next Gen. Over the last six years we&#8217;ve developed a number of these new awards:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>HNC Computing<\/li>\n<li>HNC Esports<\/li>\n<li>HND Computer Science<\/li>\n<li>HND Data Science<\/li>\n<li>HND Networking &amp; Cloud Infrastructure<\/li>\n<li>HND Software Development.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We&#8217;re currently developing two new HNQs: <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/hnd-esports\/\">HND Esports<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/hnc-computer-games-development\/\">HNC Computer Games Development<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Up until this year (session 2026\/27) these were closed, pilot developments but these qualifications are now open to any approved centre. We&#8217;re expecting some new centres to come on-board this year and we hope this new team will help these centres deliver these awards for the first time. The team will comprise Qualifications Scotland staff, External Verifiers and fellow practitioners.<\/p>\n<p>Please <a href=\"mailto:helen.zhang@sqa.org.uk\">contact Helen<\/a> if you would like to be added to the team. Or request entry directly through <a href=\"https:\/\/teams.microsoft.com\/l\/team\/19%3Ao41J4yN94vORYlJL6zbfZQrbZNwa163iidztLhaTnEg1%40thread.tacv2\/conversations?groupId=0702bfef-9507-439d-ab98-67b26b484a2c&amp;tenantId=2bc4b4d8-b415-4f6c-8bb8-2c2985d7171f\">this link<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I recently posted about online support for vocational Computing qualifications such as NPA Cyber Security and National Certificate in Computing with Digital Media. We&#8217;ve also created a dedicated Microsoft Team to support new Higher National Qualifications (HNQs), developed as part of Next Gen. Over the last six years we&#8217;ve developed a number of these new awards: HNC Computing HNC Esports HND Computer Science HND Data Science HND Networking &amp; Cloud Infrastructure HND Software Development. We&#8217;re currently developing two new HNQs:&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing-posts"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4458","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"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=4458"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4458\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4459,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4458\/revisions\/4459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4458"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4458"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qualifications.gov.scot\/computing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4458"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}