Grading - the interim position

The review of grading in the NextGen: HN pilot is well underway. Andrew Newman, Policy and Research Manager for grading in NextGen: HN, gives an update on the progress of the work taking place.

Grading is among the key changes in the NextGen qualifications, and it’s vital that it’s tested giving us an opportunity to improve on the initial approaches that our pilot centres have been working with. Whole qualification grading should allow pilot centres to recognise learners’ achievement across the course content, in a way that reflects their standard and abilities.

Over the last six months, we have engaged with a large number of our pilot centres as they come to the end of their first year of delivery. We want to extend our thanks to all the pilot centres that have given up their time to discuss their experiences regarding grading in their NextGen: HN qualifications.

We’ve almost completed looking at how grading has been received throughout our NextGen: HN qualifications, and remaining qualifications will be completed by the end of this year. Detailed discussion with centres have taken place covering various topics including assessment and grading alongside how the new grading approach has supported this.

In addition, we’ve been looking at how we can support centres with grading learners’ engagement in meta-skills – and we will be doing the same thing for Learning for Sustainability.

Interim report and recommendations

SQA have captured findings on grading in an interim report, which has been reviewed by our internal governance. The interim report captures our current position and makes recommendations for what we want to focus on next, including the following key principles:

Grading models – currently we are testing three grading models: the key competency model, the holistic model and the key component model. Different NextGen: HN qualifications are using different models, but we have found that the key competency and holistic models share various commonalities, and the key component model was not fit for the qualifications it was being used for. Therefore, we will continue to focus on the key competency and holistic models. We expect to identify a set of clear principles for the use of these models, consequently we won’t need to ask pilot centres using one model to switch to another, where that model is working well.
Overall grade outcomes – our overall grade outcomes of Achieved, Achieved with Merit and Achieved with Distinction are understood and well received by centres delivering the qualifications. However, we want to ensure that we reflect learners’ achievement across both NextGen: HNCs and NextGen: HNDs. Therefore, we are going to amend our grade descriptors to reflect NextGen: HN’s and NextGen: HND’s separately and accurately. This will allow for clearer benchmarking of grades across the two qualifications, which are at two different SCQF levels.
Standardisation – grading reviews have highlighted the benefit of pilot centres discussing and sharing their grade judgements and how they have decided between learners’ standards. We want to extend this activity beyond the pilot, so that there is a supportive standardisation discussion across centres for all our NextGen: HN qualifications. This will be conducted alongside regular Quality Assurance activity, and is we hope we will be able to test it during this pilot year. Documentation and guidance – we have refined our documentation and pilot centres will now receive both an Educator Guide and a new ‘grading pack’. The grading pack will be a convenient document for essential information about grading, including any relevant grading matrices and guidance. We will further refine and improve the document based on discussions with pilot centres.

The next few months

We plan to carry out a lot of work on grading over the coming months, and we want to thank pilot centres for their engagement and support with this work. We look forward to updating you on this progress at future events and in future editions of NextGen News as we set clear principles, establish standardisation processes, and look to embed existing good practice across more qualifications in the pilot.