Review of Core Skills

Background

• The aims of this limited review are to update standards; remove barriers and widen access; contribute to social inclusion; and better meet the needs of employers.
• The proposals take account of Curriculum for Excellence, Determined to Succeed, Skills for Scotland: A Lifelong Skills Strategy, and employer identification of skills gaps through Futureskills/CBI surveys.
• Some of the work (including creating new components in Working with Others and Information & Communication Technology) was completed before April 2007.

What we did in 2007–08

Used a new specification for our Core Skills Units. The Units are written for the learner in plain English to promote ownership of the learning. The assessment processes are also extremely flexible. We developed new Units for all Core Skills, including NQ and workplace Units, and small Units at SCQF levels 2 and 3 in Communication and Numeracy.

Introduced smaller 10 hour Units. We developed these at SCQF levels 2 and 3 in Communication and Numeracy.

Held national engagement events on the draft Units. We maintained a dialogue with centres through our SQA Academy webspace, and discussed our proposals with stakeholder groups.

Validated and launched the new NQ Units nationally in March 2008. There has been unanimous support for the new Unit Specification as much more user-friendly and accessible.

What happens next?

• The new Units will be available from August 2008, with first certification from October 2008.
• We plan to monitor uptake, provide support materials for each Unit, provide guidance on changes to the Core Skill profile as a result of new components, and offer practitioner events in the autumn to support the new standards.
• We will produce support for assessing against the new standards through the Understanding Standards website (USW).