Internet Safety review commences

I wrote in this blog in April that we were would review the Internet Safety qualification at some point in the coming financial year. Well, that review commenced this morning with the first meeting of the Qualification Development Team.

The review is being led by Ted Hastings, who created the original award, which has been very well received by thousands of learners in schools and colleges since its introduction in 2006. SQA was the first awarding body in the UK, and perhaps Europe, to develop a national qualification in this area and it has subsequently been adopted by the E-Skills Sector Skills Council as the basis of their own E-Safety qualification.

We have already carried out some research into the changes that will be required, so we're pretty clear about what needs to be done to update the qualification and harmonise it with the E-Skills version.

We will also be updating the support materials for the qualification, including the "smartphone" materials that can be used to undertake the award using a mobile phone. Our research revealed that the existing teaching and learning materials were a little dry so we will be endevouring to make them more engaging this time around.

We hope to have the new unit, and the associated support materials, available to centres from January 2012. The launch event will take place on Safer Internet Day 2012.

Contact Caroline if you want to know more about this project.