HN Profile and Promotion

calculator image Carolyn Davidson, Business Manager for Research and Information Services, SQA and John Allan, Senior Consultant, SQA, facilitated this workshop.

Carolyn presented statistics on HN entries, age and gender trends, and subject focus. She noted that although there had been a downward trend in overall entries for Group Awards between 2002 and 2005 there had been a reversal of this trend last year and entries for individual Units showed an upward trend. In terms of gender, patterns still persisted in specific subject areas whilst analysis by age showed an encouraging increase in those under twenty years of age taking HN qualifications.

Looking to the future, Carolyn said that the projections were that there may be moderate growth in full time enrolment, alongside growth in part-time programmes such as Professional Development Awards. John then presented some recent case studies of students who had successfully gained their HNC/D in a variety of subjects from a range of colleges. These would be used by SQA for future promotion of HNC/Ds.

Delegates welcomed the opportunity to share intelligence on this subject and highlighted the continuing strength of HNs in effecting articulation to HEIs and in the workplace but drew attention to the following challenges:

A limited number of places on Medicine and Nursing programmes
Differential application of SCQF by HEIs
A possible perception among UK employers that Foundation Degree was better than HND
The need for joint marketing and publicity
Risk aversion among social classes most likely to use HN route
Differential funding of HNs as opposed to degree programmes at same SCQF levels

The presentations on statistics and case studies can be downloaded below.