National Qualifications Update Michelle Sharpe Senior Operations Manager, Liaison Team

Subject Review Reports Broader areas for consideration Key issues Action plan 2016–17 Action plan 2017–18 SQA has been engaging with teachers and lecturers on an ongoing basis, as well as gathering intelligence from the awarding and verification process. As a result of this work, SQA has created subject reports to give lecturers and teachers an insight into our planned incremental changes and further areas of investigation for each subject. Each report identifies the key issues for that subject and an associated action plan. Some of these are around the design and operation of Unit assessment, without compromising the credibility and integrity of the qualification. Mention the 3 assessment approaches: Cut-off score (Maths and Sciences) Assessment standard threshold Holistic Review Reports can be found on subject web pages under the heading Updates and Announcements: www.sqa.org.uk/nqsubjects

Impact of Subject Review Reports? Changes in practice for session 2016–17 Unavoidable temporary misalignment of documents with practice UNLESS we held changes for a year Subject Guidance Note on how Subject Review Report changes will impact on documents — by end of August 2016 (for some subjects only) Changes to documents then occur to usual pattern

Planned changes to documents Publication date Documents End of May 2016 Course and Unit Support Notes End of August 2016 Unit Assessment Support Packs End of September 2016 Coursework assessment tasks, specimen question papers and exemplar question papers www.sqa.org.uk/nqsubjectchanges

Planned changes to documents contd. Publication date Documents End of August 2016 *Course Specifications, Course Assessment Specifications, Unit Specifications End of September 2016 *Course and Unit Support Notes This schedule takes into account any necessary changes that are identified as a result of verification activities, the exam diet and feedback received from centres throughout the current session. It is anticipated that additional, critical changes may be identified for some subjects following the grade boundary meetings which take place during the summer months. Where such changes are identified, we will make further updates and publish these documents by the following dates (seen next slide) * Further critical changes only

Recent communications The following documents have been published on www.sqa.org.uk/nqresearch Executive summary of SQA initial evaluation of new National Courses Research and Evidence Report: Internal Unit Assessment in National Courses Research: Fieldwork Visits Research: What does this mean for teachers and lecturers? In addition, Subject Review Reports have been published on the individual subject pages www.sqa.org.uk/nqsubjects