PC Passport review

I announced the review of PC Passport late last year, and I recently noted that it was one of my priorities for the coming year.

The Qualification Design Team (QDT) for this project met for the first time yesterday. The QDT is responsible for creating the new awards. There are representatives of schools (such as Bannerman HS), colleges (such as Cardonald College) and business (a Glasgow-based company) on the group . I convene the group.

PC Passport was originally introduced in 2004 (it was piloted in 2003) and revised in 2007. During that time, it has become SQA’s most successful vocational ICT qualification in terms of uptake (and income).

The meeting went well, and we made a great deal of progress. The first meeting in any development is a bit of a brain-storming session but this meeting was more productive than most since we made some pretty important decisions about the shape of the new awards. In fact, there was a great deal of consensus on the group (which is not always the case). One really important decision is that we want to go back to basics – to recreate the simplicity of the original PC Passport award. We also recognised that it needed to be modernised in terms of its contents, and the group had some exciting ideas about what should be in the new awards. There will continue to be three awards (at SCQF Levels 4, 5 and 6), but the title of the new awards will be different to reflect the new focus of the qualification.

We will consult on our proposals once we have firmed them up so look out for more details in the future.

We hope to have the new awards available to centres from August 2014, and plan to publish the group award specification early next year. Please contact Hilary if you want more information about this development. We’re still looking for members of the QDT so please let us know if you are interested in working with us on this exciting development.

Bobby Published 16/01/2013