MFLE
Glossary
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| SAAS (Student Awards Agency for Scotland) | An agency that is part of the Scottish Government and is responsible to Scottish Ministers. Its purpose is to deal with financial support and give advice to eligible Scottish students in higher education throughout the United Kingdom, together with certain related roles in connection with student loans, hardship funds and educational endowments. |
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| SCCC (Scottish Consultative Council on the Curriculum) | Merged with SCET in July 2000 to form Learning and Teaching Scotland. |
| SCCYP! (Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People) | In 1991 Scotland signed up to an international agreement - the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This is a set of promises to do certain things to make life better for children and young people. It is the job of Scotland's Commissioner for Children and Young People to make sure those promises are kept. |
| Scottish CILT (Scottish Centre for Information on Language Teaching and Research) | The centre was set up in 1991 to provide information about languages to students and teachers, opinion formers and policy makers; to promote the learning and use of all languages of relevance to Scotland; and to conduct research in support of the work of language teachers and other language professionals. It receives an annual grant from the Scottish Government Education Department to fund its core activities. |
| ScotXED (Scottish Exchange of Educational Data) | ScotXchange on the web provides a publication facility, with a focus on statistics and benchmarks, for Scottish schools education. It is produced through the ScotXed programme and is owned by SEED. |
| SCQF (Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework) | The framework is a way of making sense of the large and varied number of Scottish qualifications/training programmes. The framework has 12 levels. At any level some qualifications cover a wide range of skills and knowledge. It will change and expand over the next few years as the framework is rolled out across Scotland's education and training sectors. |
| SCRAN (Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network) | Scran is an online learning resource service and educational environment with 325,000 images, movies and sounds from museums, galleries, archives and the media. All Scottish local authority schools and libraries have full and free access to Scran funded by the Scottish Government. Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) has a SCRAN licence. |
| SCRE (Scottish Council for Research in Education) | The SCRE Centre supports Scottish education through research. SCRE's functions are to conduct educational research of the highest quality and to support the use of research outcomes through the dissemination of findings. |
| SCROLLA (Scottish Centre for Research into Online Learning and Assessment) | The centre provides a focus for multidisciplinary research into the use of information and communication technologies in education, concentrating on online learning and assessment. It draws upon educational, psychological, socio-cultural and computing science research traditions to provide a strong infrastructure to support development and practice across the Scottish educational community and beyond. |
| Search engine | A website designed specifically to allow users to search the web by entering words, which the engine then uses to locate matching sites. |
| SEED (Scottish Executive Education Department) | The government department within the Scottish Executive which is responsible for pre-school and school education in Scotland, as well as other portfolios such as children, young people, social care, social work services, tourism, culture and sport. |
| Self-assessment | Pupils are involved in self-assessment when they look at their own work in a reflective way and identify aspects that are good and others which need to be improved. Black and Wiliam highlighted this as an important part of learning. One way of doing this is by traffic lighting, where pupils are asked to assign red, amber and green colours to their work to indicate their level of confidence. Like peer assessment, self-assessment benefits if teachers explain and demonstrate it and ensure pupils have a clear understanding of learning objectives and criteria of success. |
| SELMAS (Scottish Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society) | An association interested in the development of practice, teaching, training and research in educational leadership, management and administration at all levels. It is associated with the British Educational Leadership Management and Administration Society (BELMAS). |
| SEN (Special educational needs) | The term was previously used in relation to pupils whose learning was significantly behind their peers' for a range of reasons, such as a disability or learning difficulties, or who needed special support to enable them to benefit from education. The former concept of Special Educational Needs is now subsumed in a wider Additional Support Needs Framework under the Education (Additional Support for Learning) (Scotland) Act 2004. |
| SERA (Scottish Educational Research Association) | SERA aims to promote educational research and debate about the contribution research can make to enhanced practice. SERA membership brings the opportunity to join an active community of teachers, policy makers, teacher-researchers, professional researchers, research funders and other educational professionals. |
| SETT (Scottish Education and Teaching with Technology) The Scottish Learning Festival | SETT is a free two-day annual conference and exhibition, organised by Learning and Teaching Scotland for the Scottish education community. It aims to inspire and transform professional practice in teaching and learning. SETT also encourages creative and effective use of ICT in education. It combines a thought-provoking conference programme of keynote presentations, seminars and workshops with the largest education exhibition to take place in Scotland. |
| SFEFC (Scottish Further Education Funding Council) | A non-departmental public body established in 1999 which is responsible to the Scottish Government. It provides financial support for teaching, and associated activities for Scottish further education colleges. |
| SFEU (Scottish Further Education Unit) | SFEU works in partnership with Scotland's 46 colleges - as well as other key national agencies - supporting the development of learning and teaching in Scotland, through support of staff and the curriculum in further education in Scotland. |
| SG (Standard Grade) | Standard Grades are National Qualifications and are generally taken over two years of study in third and fourth year at secondary school with an exam at the end of fourth year. There are three levels of study: Credit, General and Foundation. The awards are graded by performance in national examinations. |
| SGA (Scottish Group Awards) | An arrangement whereby passes in examinations administrated by SQA are grouped in order to provide entry qualifications to further courses of study or training. |
| Sharing criteria | When pupils are made aware of the standard of work expected at a particular level. It is important to ensure that criteria are expressed in language that is accessible to the learner. It is helpful also if pupils are able to discuss examples of work which does / does not meet the criteria. |
| SHEFC (Scottish Higher Education Funding Council) | A non-departmental public body responsible to the Scottish Executive which was established in June 1992. it provides financial support for teaching, research and associated activities in Scottish higher education institutions. |
| SLRC (Scots Language Resource Centre) | The centre was founded in 1991 to do everything possible to promote the Scots language. It has a collection of books and other material; provides information about Scots to enquirers from around the world; holds conferences and meetings; helps a great variety of people to find out more about Scots, and establishes contacts between activists, academics and others with the intention of encouraging discussion about Scots and the development of plans for its future. |
| SLS (School Leaders Scotland) | An organisation to which most secondary headteachers in Scotland belong. It deals with national issues as they affect schools and headteachers and also discusses issues directly with the Scottish Government. |
| SLS (School Leaders Scotland) | An organisation to which most secondary headteachers in Scotland belong. It deals with national issues as they affect schools and headteachers and also discusses issues directly with the Scottish Government. |
| SMT | An abbreviation for senior management team. This will typically consist of the headteacher and depute headteachers responsible for the strategic management of a school. |
| SPTC (Scottish Parent Teacher Council) | The national organisation for PTAs and PAs in Scotland. Its aim is to advance education by encouraging the fullest co-operation between home and school, education authorities, central government and all those concerned with education in Scotland. SPTC has recognition as a national body for parents. It currently has around 1200 member PTAs/PAs. |
| SQA (Scottish Qualifications Authority) | An executive non-departmental public body sponsored by the Scottish Government. It is the national body in Scotland responsible for the development, accreditation, assessment and certification of qualifications other than degrees. |
| SQH (Scottish Qualification for Headship) | The Scottish Qualification for Headship (SQH) is intended to help potential headteachers prepare themselves for taking up a headteachers' post. The qualification is based on the Standard for Headship in Scotland , which is the subject of a review through the Curriculum for Excellence programme. |
| SSDN (Scottish Schools Digital Network) | Now renamed as Glow - see separate entry. |
| SSERC (Scottish Schools Equipment Research Centre) | The Scottish Schools Equipment Research Centre covers science, technology and safety (STS) in schools. |
| SSO (Scottish Schools Online) | A searchable directory of all schools in Scotland, including local authority and independent schools. It provides contact details, links to school websites where available, and statistical and other information for every school. |
| SSTA (Scottish Secondary Teachers' Association) | Scotland's second largest teachers' union, set up to focus on secondary issues, initially as a reaction to the undue influence exercised on national education issues at that time by the primary sector. Nowadays this has developed into a commitment to ensure that the secondary view is properly represented. |
| Standard Grade | A two-year course generally taken over the third and fourth years at secondary school, with an exam at the end of the fourth year. There are three levels: Credit, General, and Foundation. Students generally take exams at two – Credit and General, or General and Foundation. This makes sure that students have the best chance of achieving as high a grade as possible. Coursework is also assessed and projects, or folios, count towards the final mark along with the exam. |
| Success criteria | Statements of standards from which success in an activity, for example a test/examination or a development plan, can be measured. They specify the acceptable evidence that the aim(s) of the enterprise has/have been achieved. |
| Summative assessment | Assessment designed to establish the extent to which pupils have achieved the learning aims of a programme of work. It can take various forms: a review of a significant body of classwork evidence to establish whether learning aims/criteria of success have been achieved, an end-of-unit test to check whether key points have been understood/key skills have been acquired; a pass/fail criterion-referenced test or examination in which the pupil demonstrates whether he or she can meet the success criteria for a longer period of work (for example, a term or a year); or an examination which samples a representative range of a large programme of work and grades pupils' performance. Feedback is usually in the form of a mark or a pass/fail or achieved/not achieved statement, without comment on strengths and future learning needs or next steps. However, it is often possible to use summative assessments formatively - for example, to identify areas of understanding or skill which need more attention. |
| SVQ (Scottish Vocational Qualification) | SVQs are qualifications which relate to an individual's ability to do a job and which are based on actual working practices in workplace conditions. They are similar to National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) awarded in other parts of the UK. |
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