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SQA LAUNCHES FIRST REGIONAL STRATEGY
Strategy developed to address specific challenges in Highlands and Islands
Memo of Understanding signed between SQA and UHI
The Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) has launched a new strategy for action in the Highlands and Islands region.
SQA is responsible for developing, accrediting, assessing and certificating all Scottish qualifications apart from university degrees and some professional qualifications, and this is the organisation's first specific regional strategy. It has been developed in conjunction with local partners and stakeholders as a follow-up to last year's fact-finding visit to the area by the SQA Board of Management.
It recognises that the different parts of Scotland have diverse needs and opportunities and through it, SQA plans to deliver a more "joined-up" service to the Highlands and Islands, focusing strongly on the area's special priorities. Early areas of activity include:
- Increased local delivery, through College/School partnerships, of SQA's new Skills for Work courses, which are vocationally-based and will prepare young people for the world of work, and let them take up local employment opportunities in sectors such as Construction, Child Care, Hospitality, Rural Skills and Sport and Recreation.
- More delivery of ESOL qualifications (English for Speakers of Other Languages), by developing units for migrant workers and encouraging more ESOL Courses in schools, aimed at persuading incoming talent to stay in the local area.
- Piloting specific new Citizenship material (in partnership with WEA Inverness).
- Finding ways to support the recognition of migrant workers' qualifications, starting with Polish qualifications.
Another priority of the Strategy is to find ways to develop new qualifications in subject areas of particular importance to the Highlands and Islands. Subject areas already identified include Creative Industries; Science and Technology - including sustainable energy; Health Care; Construction; and Traditional Culture and Music.
We are delighted to be launching this Strategy. Through it, we want to help young people and members of the workforce feel greater confidence in the local future and to play our part in ensuring they will have up-to-date skills in sectors that are, and will be, important to the region's economy.
We want to help provide a learning and career development infrastructure that will attract newcomers and retain people. In turn, this will bring even more local investment.
In developing a joint programme of work for the Highland and Islands, SQA and the University of the Highlands and Islands Millennium Institute have already formed a strategic alliance, and at the launch, these two organisations signed a Memorandum of Understanding that publicly and symbolically binds them both to partnership working in specific areas that will help deliver the new Strategy.
