1. An update on sector reviews: - what have we learned? - what next?
Cassy Taylor
Associate Director (Vocational Qualifications)

3. Sector Reviews - Aims
Understand the qualifications landscape in a priority economic sector
Identify the views of stakeholders on the effectiveness of existing qualifications
Determine whether qualifications meet the needs of learners, employers and higher education institutions
Identify any lessons to be learned from qualifications in other comparable nations
Identify whether Qualifications Wales should take, or recommend others to take, any actions to improve the effectiveness of the qualifications and/or the system
Publish a report on findings and proposals for action

4. Focus of Sector Reviews
Qualifications used in publicly funded programmes of learning, especially:
Qualifications taken by learners aged 14-16
Qualifications taken by learners aged in full time learning (school or FE)
Qualifications used in apprenticeship frameworks
As well as
Other qualifications (or features of the qualifications system) that the sector tells us it's important to look at or which the sector raises concerns about

5. Review methodology Learner engagement Stakeholder engagement
Technical review
International comparison
Sector advisors
Stakeholder panel

6. Cross-cutting findings
Complex and unclear pathways and progression
Currency of content
Repetition across levels
Unengaging or irrelevant assessment
– sometimes relying too much on command verbs
Burden of assessment
Expertise of internal assessors
Inconsistency across awarding bodies
Limited learning where competence-assessment used

7. A child learning to speak
Bloom’s Taxonomy
A child learning to speak
Knowledge
Recognise sounds as words
Understanding
Attribute meaning to those words
Application
Say those words back to others
Analysis
Derive meaning from sequences of words
Synthesis
Construct sequences of words to convey meaning
Evaluation
Work out whether others understand their sequences of words
Norman Gealy

8. “We are actually assessing vocational students, who have chosen a vocational route, academically. We are possibly stopping those who could be the best trades people from progression simply because we are judging them on academic values.”
Head of Construction in a Further Education College

9. Valid
Reliable
Manageable
Engaging

10. Health and Social Care (including Childcare)
New commissioned qualifications from 2019/2020
Construction and the Built Environment
New commissioned qualifications from 2021 for Further Education and Apprenticeships
New GCSE and A level Built Environment from 2021/2022
ICT
Phasing out of older qualifications in favour of newer ones in FE
Potential introduction of T level qualification
New GCSE and A level Digital Technologies from 2021/2022

11. Research arising from sector reviews
The use of technology in the assessment of vocational learning
Indicators of engagement in vocational assessment

12. Sector Review 4 – Engineering, Advanced Manufacturing and Energy
Sept Start-up
Dec Stakeholder panels
Nov 2018 to Apr Learner engagement
Jan to Sep Stakeholder interviews and engagement
Jan to June International comparison study
Summer Technical review
Sep 2019 to Mar Analysis and options testing
Autumn Report

13. Sectors 5 and 6 2021 Financial Services
2022 Travel, Tourism and Hospitality

14. Thank you!