I recently gave you early notice about a forthcoming event to introduce new support materials for NPA Cyber Security. I can now confirm that the event will take place on Tuesday, 19 June at Royal College in Glasgow. You can book a place at the event here. It’s first-come-first-served so please book your place soon if you’re interested in attending.
Attendees will receive paper copies of all of the materials (sent after the event) and some of the writing team will be there to introduce the material. A guest speaker from the Scottish Government …
As previously blogged, the PC Passport workbooks have been added to the SQA website. Additional supplementary materials will be added in the coming weeks containing worked examples and sample answers.
Last week I had the opportunity of attending the Women in STEM Conference 2018, which took place in London. It was a big event, with over 150 attendees (disappointingly, only a handful of male representatives) from a range of sectors, including education and industry. It was a very full day, with 12 speakers who gave interesting insights into the different approaches and initiatives …
I’m currently organising the QST (Qualifications Support Team) meeting for late June 2018 in Glasgow (date and venue TBC).
The QST meets once a year to discuss and support any improvements to the HN/NC group awards within the Computing/IT portfolio. The members of the QST are from colleges, schools and training providers and are a great way to let …
As regular readers will know, we’ve been developing teaching, learning and assessment material to support the NPA Cyber Security for some time. We recently completed draft versions of the materials and we’re currently piloting this material in 20 centres across Scotland.
Once the pilot is complete, we will finalise the material and have a formal launch event on Tuesday, 19 June in …
New Learning & Teaching Materials for the NPA PC Passport (SCQF Levels 4, 5 & 6) have been published on the SQA website.
The Workbooks for Presentations, Spreadsheets and Word Processing can be found under the Qualification content and delivery tools tab, towards the bottom of the subject page.
Each Workbook takes an integrated approach to learning and teaching.
The validation event for the new HNC Cyber Security was held on Friday in the Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow. The event was the culmination of a year of intense work to produce a new qualification in this important field. The purpose of validation is to scrutinise a new qualification by a panel of independent experts. The panel consisted of …
A quick update from the previous blog post about the NPAs Computer Games Development (SCQF Levels 4, 5 & 6):
The Group Award has now been validated along with the units. I’m currently in the process of operationalising it (unit coding, subject page, etc.) and it will be available to Centres within the next few weeks.
The NC Computer Games Development was validated last Friday. For more information, please read the recent post on our blog regarding this validation event.
We are now looking for volunteers to write the ASPs for the new/revised units. We will be developing ASPs for the following units:
Code
Unit title
SCQF Level
Credit value
New/ Rev.
Mand./ Opt.
The validation event for the revised NC Computer Games Development took place on Friday in the Grand Central Hotel in Glasgow. The purpose of validation events is for independent experts to check new (or revised) qualifications to make sure that they are fit for purpose.
The validation panel comprised representatives of colleges, industry, training centres and SQA. The development team was represented by the Lead Developer, a college member of the QDT, Emma and me. I thought that it was a particularly good event with really positive suggestions for improvement.
The outcome of the validation was that the revised qualification …
As part of the HNC Cyber Security development, we’ve produced a number of new Higher National units relating to the subject area. There are several new units including:
Data Security
Digital Forensics Case Studies
Internet of Things
Penetration Testing
Scripting for Security
Social Engineering.
We also took the opportunity to update some existing units, such as Digital Forensics and Ethical …
We completed the Group Award Specification for this award today and it has now been submitted for (internal) validation. You can see the final version here. The units have been ready for some time but were not published on the website because they weren’t coded. You can see final (uncoded) versions of the units here.
The validation of the group award should be straight-forward since we haven’t changed the structure of the award. However, we have significantly updated and improved the component units (which have already been validated).
I appreciate that we’re late to finalise the qualification given how close it is to the end of session but I hope some of your consider the new version of the award since the units are much better, with significantly less assessment than the current versions.
As many of you will be aware, we are at the final stage of developing the HNC Cyber Security, which will be available for delivery from August 2018.
As part of the development process, SQA seeks feedback on qualifications as they are being developed. Therefore, before we take the award to validation on 18th May, we would greatly appreciate your views …
Some of you may know that SQA has recently embarked on a review of Higher National Qualifications (HNQs). HNQs include HNCs and HNDs (but also PDAs). The last review of HNQs was in 2003, when the current design rules were introduced. The new initiative is called HN Next Generation (HN-NG) and will take a root-and-branch review of current HN awards.
At this time, the project team are gathering information and that will be the focus for most of this year (2018). Meetings have been arranged (or have already taken place) with stakeholders across all sectors. Once this fact-finding phase is complete, the team responsible for HN-NG will then consider what changes should be made (and consult on those changes). There are no firm timescales right now and we don’t want to hurry this important review so nothing will change in the foreseeable future.
Running in parallel with this project is SQA’s on-going Assessment Futures initiative, which is taking a hard look at our assessment practices with a view to modernising them. It is likely that these two initiatives will work together so that the assessment model employed in HN-NG will be informed by the Assessment Futures project.
Undoubtedly, changes are coming to HNQs. It’s too early to say what these will be but they will likely have a big impact on the shape of Higher National awards in the future. The review of a number of HN Computing qualifications will commence …
We’re currently looking for new External Verifiers for Computing. The advert provides more information. We’re looking for people from all sectors but particularly from training centres, schools and universities.
External Verification is great CPD for teachers, lecturers and trainers. It gives you the opportunity to find out how other centres go about delivering SQA awards. Training is provided so don’t …
I’ve now divided divided responsibilities between Claudia and Emma, and updated the organisation chart for the team. You can download it here. It’s worth downloading and printing so that you know who to contact about each qualification.
The division of work isn’t as clean as it was before Helen left since it’s not a simple advanced/non-advanced split. There’s a …
Hello, I’m Claudia Lambie and have recently joined the Computing team to cover Helen’s post whilst she’s on maternity leave. I previously worked for SQA as a Qualifications Officer for school-based National Qualifications. Whilst I’m not new to SQA, I’ll be familiarising myself with the vocational portfolio over the coming weeks.
