An HN Accounting Practitioner’s Academic Year Catherine Mancini

About me College lecturer for 27 years Taught most of the core HN Accounting units over the years Been a member of the quality support team for business qualifications for five or six years Been involved in writing or vetting many of the specifications and ASPs you are using EV at central verification and prior verification

Purpose of this presentation To reflect on our role as lecturers in teaching our students and gathering the evidence which allows SQA to award qualifications to them To share my experience as a practitioner of carrying out this role over the years Look at a typical academic year for an HN accounting lecturer and the challenges we face

Provided by SQA Framework for course Unit specifications ASPs for all mandatory units Prior verification service External verification to confirm decisions Development visits on request

The academic year Given a timetable Request latest specification/ASP Internal verification/standardisation meetings Teach/assess/mark/remediate/re-assess Internal verification Prepare for external verification (maybe) Record results

The unit specification Check that it is the latest version – most units have had updates in the last few years Outcomes and Evidence Requirements are mandatory, the rest is advisory Check assessment conditions Check error tolerance

The ASP Check that it is the latest version Make sure it meets the Evidence Requirements in the specification Decide if you are going to use it or develop your own Update if necessary to reflect changes in tax rates or accounting standards

Developing your own We generally need an alternative for resits and sometimes there is only one ASP Most of our units are quite prescriptive and alternatives are just a different story with new numbers. This would only need to be internally verified If your alternative is significantly different from the ASP prior verification is recommended

Internal verification/standardisation Your college should have a policy on this setting out who is responsible for organising meetings, who attends and how it is recorded With the mergers this has become more difficult to manage Any changes to ASPs should be recorded at these meetings

Teaching and Assessing The teaching part is up to you You should make sure you have covered all the knowledge and skills required even if some of them are not in the assessment instrument you are using. They could be required in the Graded Unit Make sure you conduct the assessment using the stated conditions so that all our students are treated fairly and consistently

Marking Check the error tolerance ASP will provide a solution Decide what errors you are treating as principle and what is arithmetic (not always clear cut) There is some advice on this on the website but sometimes professional judgement is required Clearly show decisions made on scripts (you may have to present your marked scripts for verification)

Pass/Remediate/Resit Check the error tolerance Within tolerance is obviously a pass Outwith tolerance – remediate or resit? No definite answer to this one – professional judgement required If it looks like student knows what they are doing and maybe has an error too many then remediation may be acceptable otherwise it would be a resit

Internal verification Again there will be a college policy on this which ensures that a sample of marked scripts are checked by someone else Some policies state that results are never recorded before verification takes place and others record but don’t submit to SQA before verification

Prepare for external verification If you have done all of the above there will be no preparation required other than gathering scripts EV will want to see evidence of internal verification activity and standardisation in line with college policy and accurately marked scripts in line with error tolerance in the specification Don’t worry they generally don’t bite

Record results Again different colleges have different processes You might record, admin support might record, managers might record Retain evidence for three weeks? after closing date of unit unless you have been informed of an EV visit Go on holiday and prepare to do it all again!