Laura Lane, post-16 qualifications officer

Another very helpful meeting, this time with Laura, who has relatively recently been appointed to help the university get to grips with the new secondary qualifications structure, and in particular the new diplomas. Her task, as even this brief outline suggests, is pretty ambitious, especially as some details of the new structure are still being worked out. However, as one of the aims of the new structure is for consortia of HE, FE, and secondary institutions to work together, it's really good that TUOS has a voice in the ongoing discussions, and that we will be working more closely with local providers and colleagues.

There are also definite advantages to the diploma structure. For example, the extended project - "a level 3 qualification involving a single piece of work that requires a high degree of planning, preparation, research and independent working", sayeth the QCA - seems like an excellent preparation for higher education, and indeed a direct response to some popular concerns about the lack of independent study within the current A-level structure. There's also the
connections that can be potentially drawn between the "Personal, learning, and thinking skills" embedded within the diploma, and the skills HE is trying to develop, and TASH to foreground. I blogged a bit on this earlier. What I can add to that following the meeting with Laura is that these PLTS skills aren't being explicitly assessed, but are considered central to the new units as they are developed. Given that this development process is still underway, we'll have to see how it works out, and how the skills are structured within the diploma curricula; and how, in turn, they can be picked up and developed further within a HE context.