DEVOLUTION hasn’t penetrated City and Guilds, whose Broadsheet claims that the new National Learning and Skills Council - which replaces the Further Education Funding Council and training and enterprise councils - will take on responsibility for “all post-16 education within the UK”.
Er, no.
In contrast, congratulations to Renfrewshire Education Business Partnership for producing the most comprehensible and accessible guide yet to Higher Still and where its reforms fit in with the raft of other qualifications.
No rush into premature publication here. A bulletin on Understanding Modern Scottish Qualifications informs the reader that “since our last publication on this subject” two major developments have taken place - the introduction of Higher Still and the formation of the Scottish Qualifications Authority, which was as long ago as April last year.
Having taken its time, the education-business partnership does a particular service in showing where the less publicised bits of Higher Still fit in - Skillstart, Lifestart and Workstart, for example, and the professional development awards. (How many teachers and lecturers, not to mention employers, could pass an exam on what these mean?) There is also a section relating SQA qualifications to other awarding bodies like the Royal Society of Arts and City and Guilds.
Finally, as the bulletin points out: “Higher Still is not a qualification. It’s only the name given to the development project.”
