Transcript New National Qualifications and Quality Assurance Update

New National Qualifications
and Quality Assurance
Update
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 Quality Assurance
Arrangements
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
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.
Quality Assurance Approach
2014/15
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, 10th Nov, 12th 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
Quality Assurance
Support
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
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