CfE Leadership Events: Senior Phase
Roderic Gillespie
Head of Curriculum for Excellence
Qualifications Development
February/March 2013

 Build on strengths of current qualifications
 Maintain current high standards and credibility
 Maximise progression
 More focus on skills development
 More open/flexible requirements
 Personalisation and choice
 Create assessment opportunities that follow and support learning & teaching
 Provide refreshed & relevant content

More flexible requirements and open assessments
 Course and unit specifications
 Course and unit support notes
 Specimen Question Papers and coursework information marking principles/instructions
 National 4 Added Value Unit Assessment
 SQA produced Unit Assessment Support Packs
 Subject support through implementation events, EdScot resources, subject webpages and SQA Liaison Team

• Follow the principles of Building the Curriculum 5
• Make assessment more of a natural part of learning and teaching
– makes learning and assessment more meaningful
– fit for purpose for the subject, level and individual learners
– allows more time to prepare candidates for added value assessment
• Considerable scope for tailoring, less prescriptive
– no restrictions on conditions for example time, open/closed book, methods/instruments of assessment, etc
• Allow teachers to use their professional judgement, subject knowledge and understanding to decide the most appropriate ways to generate evidence and assess candidates.

Feedback from verification
• Ensure assessments are valid and reliable
• Sound understanding of National Standards
− evidence being judged appropriately against requirements
− some confusion over ‘depth of treatment’ and ‘volume of assessment evidence required’
• Good assessment practice
− mainly SQA produced UASPs being used
− some innovative centre generated assessments and use of audio/visual evidence
− evidence of good internal verification/moderation
− some confusion over the recording assessment decisions/results, use of ‘marks’ and assessment conditions
• Further advice, exemplification and support required

Assessment and qualifications issues
• Planning and managing assessment
• Progression/transition from BGE
• Assimilating new requirements
• Quality assurance
• Communications
• Identifying resources
• Building confidence

Listening and responding
• Providing clarification and additional guidance where required
• National CPD Events
– Initially focussed on priority areas
– SQA/Local Authority partnership delivery
– joint events with Education Scotland
• Subject based Q&As – updated monthly
• Publishing key messages from verification
• Following-up on verification activities
• Standardisation/exemplification material
• Additional support eg Course comparison and past paper questions documents
• Monthly communication updates

Realising the potential of the new national qualifications will help ensure successful outcomes for all young people – whichever path they choose to follow