Meetings with E-Skills

I attended one of the quarterly Awarding Body Forum meetings, when the awarding bodies (such as SQA and City & Guilds) meet with the Sector Skills Council (E-Skills). Today's meeting was held in Cardiff. Some of you will know the convenor of the meeting, Chris Morrow who has done a lot of curricular work in Scotland.

These meetings cover a wide range of issues relating to the awarding bodies. The qualification sector outside of Scotland is very complex, with lots of different agencies, each with different roles, involved in the education system. It makes the Scottish system seem very straight-forward.

Two things of particular note came out of today's meeting. E-Skills wants awarding bodies to stop using paper-based portfolios by the end of 2012, and move all candidates' work to electronic portfolios by that time. E-Skills also proposes to develop new Standards relating to Internet Safety, computer games and "green IT" -- two of which are already well established in Scotland.

Contact Hilary if you want to know more about SVQs.