The past travails of the Scottish Qualifications Authority were set aside at last week’s conference in Glasgow to promote the arrival of the Oracle Internet Academy to the Scottish educational scene (see page 6). Thomas Kadelbach, director of the Academy, was generous in his praise of the SQA, describing it as “the nicest accreditation board” he had encountered in his world travels that included visits to Europe, Hong Kong and Australia. “Aw shucks”, as SQA’s chief Anton Colella would not say.
Kadelbach later bemused the delegates by stating that, when it came to aggregating the number of hours on an Oracle course in the USA, “one hour” equated to 50 minutes - leading to someone suggesting that, if the missing 10 minutes is multiplied by the 238 years that the country has been in existence, this would explain a lot about current attitudes in the land of the free.
