Monday 12 December 2011

Validation event

The validation event for the HNC Computing award was held on Friday in the SQA offices in Glasgow.

The validation panel was chaired by Cameron Walker, of Aberdeen College, and members included representatives on FE and employers. A key selection criterion for members of the Panel is that they have had no previous involvement in the development, so that they can bring a fresh perspective to the proposals.

The QDT was represented by Gerry Mackie, the Lead Developer, and a couple of members of the QDT, including the Qualification Leader for the HNC (Janice Maxted of Langside College).


The Validation Panel scrutinised the proposals very thoroughly, but were constructive throughout the event. It was a long day, commencing at 10am and concluding at 4pm, but, at the end of the day, I felt the Panel's ideas will make real improvements to the award.

The outcome of the validation was that the award was validated with a number of conditions. These mostly related to the quality of the documentation rather than the quality of the proposals. In fact, it was particularly pleasing that the Panel liked the structure of the new award, which will not change from the original draft framework. But it will be better explained and better exemplified (for example, we will add suggested pathways through the award).

Organising, preparing for, and conducting validation events is hard, and somethimes stressful, work. But events like Friday's reminded me of the benefits that they can bring. Without doubt the qualification will be improved as a result.

We agreed to revise the proposals by the end of January so we hope to have the conditions lifted in February, when we can focus on the HNDs. The new HNC Computing will be available to centres from April 2012.

Contact Caroline if you want to know more about any of the awards in this development or find out more about how SQA validates its qualifications.

3 comments:

  1. Bobby

    I'm not happy seeing my hair from that angle!

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  2. A man who can joke about his hair is a man who is at peace with it. :-)

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  3. Not too keen on the Green jumper Chris...

    ReplyDelete