Next Steps

Forms

If you are a 'paper' centre (a centre that generally sends us data using paper-based forms), check that you have the most up-to-date forms. These can be downloaded from our website (www.sqa.org.uk) as follows:

• on the homepage, go to 'Who are you?'
• select School/College/ETP SQA Co-ordinator (as appropriate) from the drop-down menu
• select Data Forms from the 'In this section' menu on the left

Note that paper submissions from centres that should submit data electronically will not be processed.

Working in partnership

If you work with another centre, check your Partnership Agreement to see who is responsible for the various procedures, eg making candidate entries and submitting results.

For more about Partnership Agreements, look at the Operational Help Centre. You can also speak to your Customer Support Manager.

Meeting deadlines (mainly for National Qualifications)

Look at the Key Dates section of the Operational Help Centre, and at dates such as holidays that are important in your centre. This will tell you when you will need to:

• Gather information or material from subject departments to meet SQA's deadlines:
  • tell staff what your centre deadlines are as soon as possible
  • allow enough time to collect the information or material (think how best to do this, eg by sending forms round subject departments) and, if necessary, process it
  • pass on to centre staff the subject-specific deadlines from our website but remind them about your centre dates
    
    
• Send information or material to SQA by the due dates - again check how best to do this, eg through SQA.net, using the file transfer facility.
  
  
• Check reports from SQA to make sure there are no errors.
  
  
• Deal with errors - you'll find information about Error Codes and Messages, and what you need to do to correct the errors in the Guide to Data Exchange (you'll find it on our website or through the link on Navigator if you have SQA.net).
  
  
• Make changes - usually as soon as you get the information from subject departments, eg they may ask you: 
  • to change the level of an entry 
  • to withdraw candidates

SQA.net

SQA.net is an internet-based data management service that centres can use for communicating with SQA. There are a number of benefits in using this service. Among its many benefits, SQA.net:

• is free of charge to our customers
• gives you access to your centre’s data held on our main database system
• allows you to see details of candidates at your centre with open entries
• lets you see which qualifications you are approved to offer
• gives you details about all our qualifications

To protect the security of the data that can be accessed, we do require you to sign a contract which details our responsibilities in providing SQA.net and your responsibility in using it.
 
If you want more information about using SQA.net, please ring the Customer Contact Centre on 0845 279 1000 or speak to your Customer Support Manager.