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New Qualifications Update

Scottish qualifications are changing as part of Curriculum for Excellence. At each stage of the development process, SQA is publishing draft documents on the website in an open and transparent way to show the thinking at each stage and to provide the opportunity to give feedback.

We have already published Design Principles, Progress Reports and Overview of Qualifications Reports which covered all of the qualifications we are developing.

Here are the latest developments:

Course Specifications

• Draft Course Specifications for National 4 and National 5 have now been published.

• These draft documents give more information about what the new National 4 and National 5 qualifications will look like and highlight the mandatory high-level skills and knowledge to be covered in the Course.

• The Course Specifications outline the subject skills, knowledge and understanding that a learner will cover in the Course and which will be assessed at the end of the Course. They also outline how it will be assessed, eg a question paper / an assignment. Further detail about the Course will come through later development stages.

Forthcoming Documents

• The next documents to be published are the Overview of Qualifications Report for Access 1 and Access 2 on 9 May 2011 and the Course Rationales and Summaries for Higher on 31 May 2011.

• Our website gives more information about what each of these documents are and describes the stages each qualification goes through to be developed.

Quality Assurance

• Following the Curriculum for Excellence events in March, we have been holding further workshops with teachers from state, independent, special schools and colleges about our quality assurance proposals.

How to leave feedback

• You can leave feedback on all of our draft documents via Have Your Say. We welcome your feedback on the Course Specifications for National 4 and National 5 by 30 June 2011.