PC Passport is now validated

I got good news this morning. PC Passport has been validated. A number of conditions were placed on the award at the recent validation event, and it has taken time to address these conditions but I’m delighted to let you know that the revised award is now validated.

Emma is now busy “operationalising” the new award. That means adding codes, publishing the Group Award Specification, and creating a subject page. This will all be done in the next week or two. In the meantime, you might want to check the FAQ for the qualification, which should answer most of your questions about the revised qualification. Please note that all of the component Units were validated some time ago and are available on the SQA website (the FAQ has direct links to each of them).

It’s been a long development. Much longer than we planned. That was due to a number of reasons but the main one was that the development forked into two developments – PC Passport and Digital Passport. We did that because the changes needed to PC Passport (to embrace changes to applications, the rise of social media, new literacy skills, etc.) would have made it unrecognisable.  Digital Passport has been available for some time.

I hope that the you like revised award. We think that it’s an improvement over what’s there in a few respects:

• it’s more up-to-date (covering the latest application software and concepts such as cloud computing)
• it’s much simpler (with separate Units for each package)
• it’s hierarchical (meaning you can mix-and-match Units across Levels)
• it’s linked to vendors.

We’ve worked alongside Microsoft to ensure that PC Passport (PCP) and Microsoft Office Specialist (MOS) are closely linked. We are currently working on credit transfer arrangements that will permit you to mix and match SQA and Microsoft curriculum and still gain this National Qualification.

I’d like to thank everyone involved in the development – particularly the Lead Developer (Frank Frame) and all of the members of the Qualification Development Team and the Validation Panel.

Please contact Emma if you want to know more about the new PC Passport qualification.

Bobby Published 21/04/2016