College Coordinator Conference 2014

Philosophy of New National
Qualifications
 Supports a coherent system of quality assurance and sharing best practice as outlined in the principles of Building the
Curriculum 5
 Encourages the integration between assessment, learning and teaching by:
– Making the learning and assessment more meaningful
– Fit for purpose for subject, level and learner

 Allows teachers/lecturers to use their professional judgement:
- Using subject knowledge to ascertain the most appropriate way to generate evidence
- Selecting appropriate assessment method for the candidate maintaining the national standard
 Considerable scope for tailoring, less prescriptive Units
- Flexibility of conditions of assessment
- Variety of methods/instrument of assessments

New NQ: Quality Assurance
Arrangements
 Maintains the credibility of National Qualifications
 Encourages the partnership approach of Curriculum for
Excellence
 Support the sharing of knowledge and understanding of national standards
 Increases confidence in assessment decisions
 Supports the flexible delivery of our new National
Qualifications

Overview Quality Assurance 2013/14
 New quality assurance arrangements were introduced to support internal assessment of the new National Qualifications from National 1 to National 5
 During the 3 Rounds of Verification, evidence was verified from:
Units (National 1 – National 5)
Internally Assessed Components of
Course Assessment (N5)
Added Value Units (N4)

Contd.
 A blend of approaches were used to externally verify the internal assessment of new National Qualifications including -
Prior Verification
Event Verification
Visiting Verification
 Centres submitted candidate evidence from a completed Unit or work in progress, ie interim evidence, where an assessment decision had been made

Quality Assurance Key Messages
 After each round of verification activity, SQA published common key messages and subject specific key messages that have been identified by the verification teams
Generic key messages
– www.sqa.org.uk/cfeqa
Subject specific key messages – available on each subject page
– www.sqa.org.uk/cfesubjects

Areas of Good Practice
The majority of centres had a sound knowledge of the new system and assessment procedures –
 A large number of centres provided excellent evidence of very thorough internal verification procedures
 Examples of internal verification processes that were seen included cross-marking, blind marking, and comparing and sampling
 Where re-assessment was necessary, some centres had focused only on the Assessment Standards still to be achieved, ensuring that candidates would not be over-assessed

Areas for Development
In a number of submissions, there was an absence of information about how assessment judgements had been made:
 Centre must provide some form of evidence as to how assessment judgments were made in relation to the separate Assessment
Standards
 Centres must have effective internal quality assurance systems in place to offer SQA qualifications
 Centres should ensure appropriate forms are completed to support candidate evidence such as candidate flyleaf, verification sample form etc.

QA Approach 2014/15
 CPD: National 1 – Higher (September/November 2014)
Verification activity will be replaced by Understanding
Standards Events for Nominees
23rd Sept, 3rd Oct, 10 th Nov, 12 th November
 Verification Round 1: National 1 – Higher (February 2015)
Will focus on the verification of Unit assessment – the number of selections will be reduced in line with intelligence gained from 2013/14 activity
 Verification Round 2: National 4 – Higher (May 2015)
Will focus on the verification of Internally Assessed
Components of Course Assessment and Added Value
Units – again the number of selections reduced

Prior Verification Service
 Free service offered to centres who:
– devise their own assessments
– significantly change SQA’s assessments
 Provides additional confidence to teachers/lecturers that a proposed assessment is fit for purpose
 Does not apply to Added Value Units

Understanding Standards – Materials
 SQA will provide resources to support and promote
Understanding Standards from N1 to Advanced Higher for
Nominees and wider audience:
 Candidate evidence for Units with commentary which can be used for training and benchmarking purposes
 Candidate evidence from Course assessment with commentary which can be used for training and benchmarking purposes
 Training materials which can be used by Nominees to support colleagues in their school, college and local authority
 Case studies

Understanding Standards - Events
A variety of Understanding Standards Events will be delivered from 2014 – 2016 which will include :
 Training events for Nominees
 Events for subject specialists
 Tailored events where specific needs are identified

Nominees for Session 2014/15
June – August 2014
 Colleges who put forward Nominees in 2013/14 were sent a spreadsheet listing details of Nominees from session 2013/14:
- Confirm who is continuing as a Nominee for session 2014/15
- Inform SQA of anyone who is no longer going to be a
Nominee and provide details of who will replace them in
2014/15
- Inform SQA of any new Nominations