SQA shares three years of supporting care experienced learners
Friday 29 August 2025
SQA has published its Corporate Parenting Report 2022–25, showing how we have supported care experienced people over the past three years.
The report highlights SQA's commitment to its corporate parenting responsibilities and demonstrates the practical steps taken to remove barriers and create opportunities for care experienced learners. This work has been shaped by SQA's Corporate Parenting Plan 2023–26, which was developed through consultation with care experienced people and organisations including Who Cares? Scotland.
Over the three-year period, SQA has made significant changes to how it supports care experienced people, including an updated Language Guide to ensure respectful communication about care experience, and treating care experience as a protected characteristic in its equality training and impact assessments.
Recognising the challenges some care experienced people can face, SQA provides free replacement certificates for life to anyone with care experience, understanding how crucial these documents are for job and education applications. We also send celebration messages and share helpful resources with care experienced learners every Results Day.
We were delighted to launch Who Cares? Scotland’s Care Experience and Corporate Parenting online training to all staff, including face-to-face sessions for senior leaders, to help colleagues understand the impact of care experience and how we can meet our responsibilities. The organisation actively celebrates care experienced people during National Care Day and Care Experienced Week, raising awareness across the education and skills community. We also support initiatives including Christmas card campaigns and the Love Rally.
To create employment opportunities, SQA encourages care experienced people into work through Modern Apprenticeships, work experience placements, mentoring programmes and Career Ready internships. We also supported Who Cares? Scotland in creating Care Experience and Corporate Parenting: a Guide for Scotland's Teachers, a resource to help teachers better support care experienced learners in their role as corporate parents.
Strong partnerships have been central to our work, with SQA collaborating with Who Cares? Scotland, MCR Pathways, Career Ready, and SQA approved centre, Haus of Seisay Hairdressing Academy, a care-friendly hairdressing academy. SQA is also represented on Who Cares? Scotland's Collaborative Corporate Parenting Network, giving us the valuable opportunities to work with other corporate parents.
Joanne Lawrie, Equality and Diversity Manager at SQA, said, 'We're really proud of the progress we’ve made to support care experienced people over the past three years. By treating care experience as a protected characteristic and making sure colleagues across SQA understand how important this is, we’ll continue to improve the support we offer to help people with experience of care reach their full potential. Working with other organisations has been fantastic – they help us understand what really matters to care experienced people and how we can better support them through their education and careers.'
As SQA becomes Qualifications Scotland, we remain committed to keeping care experienced people central to everything we do. We will listen to care experienced learners and those who advocate for them to ensure their voices are heard, and to ensure we continue to provide the right support.
The full Corporate Parenting Report 2022–25.
Care experienced people can find more information and support on SQA's Corporate Parenting webpage.