National Qualifications
Verification
Greg Murray
St Mary’s Music School
Verification
• What is being verified?
• Preparing for Verification
– Internal Verification
• Helpful Hints
• Final Thoughts.
What is being verified?
• At some point in the first two years your
centre will be verified.
• You will be asked to provide evidence to show
how you are assessing candidates against the
standard from N3-N5.
What is being verified?
• The centre is being assessed to ensure that
they are maintaining and assessing against the
national standard
– Candidates do not have to completed the unit
– Candidates do not have to have met the standard
for the outcomes for the unit being assessed
Preparing to be verified
So what happens if you get selected?
Preparing to be verified
• You should provide SQA with a sample of 12
candidates (4 from each level if possible, or
balanced if not)
• The SQA will not specify which pupils are to be
verified as they do currently
– They would like to see; a clear pass, clear fail,
borderline pass, and a borderline fail if possible.
• Similarly, the centre can choose what units
and outcomes are to be verified
Preparing to be verified
• The materials to be externally verified do not
need to come from a standardised test,
completed under examination conditions.
– If anything Unit Assessment should be considered
as an ongoing part of your teaching and learning
• It is worthwhile looking beyond the Unit-by-unit
assessment support packs, and look at the combined or
portfolio approaches.
What needs to be included:
1. Evidence of centre’s internal quality
assurance processes
2. Verification sample form (provided)
3. Centre’s candidate assessment record
4. The assessment used (with relevant marking
scheme)
5. The candidates evidence (with clear
references to where standard was met)
Internal Verification
What are you doing to ensure
quality?
Internal Verification
• Is the most important part of the verification
process.
• Within your centre it is very important that there
is a robust quality assurance system.
• This should be undertaken by someone who is
not assessing the same group of candidates for
the same subject.
– Obviously this may cause problems for smaller
centres, or team-teaching. Look towards local
networks or neighbourhood groups to aid process.
Internal Verification
• As part of this process you should ensure that
– All unit assessment materials/questions are checked
against the outcomes
– A sample of marked work is checked against the
standard
– That there is a review of assessments and procedures
for possible improvement for next time.
• This should be as part of a discussion to ensure
everyone understands the standard. It is not
meant to be an absolute or definitive process.
Helpful Hints
Hopefully…
Helpful Hints
• You should have separate assessments for each
level.
• You should consider if your assessment is suitable
for all of your candidates
• Unit assessment packs only exemplify an
approach
– SQA does not need to approve every assessment.
– Only if:
• Big departure from given assessments
• Unsure if this is suitable (although this should be part of the
verification process)
Helpful Hints
• “Open-book” assessments are permitted
• Answers given by candidates can be doublecounted so that they can be assessed for
different outcomes in the same paper
– If assessing Scottish outcome 1.1, they could also
be assessed for outcome 2.1 or 2.2 at the same
time.
• Outcome 1s for each Unit do not need to be
assessed using that course content.
Final Thoughts