National Units are the building blocks of National Courses and Group Awards. They are also qualifications in their own right. They generally take around 40 hours of teaching to complete. Many full-time NQ college courses are made up of groupings of National Units.
National Courses are usually made up of three National Units and an external assessment (which could be an exam or piece of work) assessed by examiners. They are available from Intermediate 1 to Advanced Higher.
National Courses usually consist of three subject-related National Units, which are assessed by the class teacher/lecturer, plus an external assessment. To gain a full Course award, students have to pass all the Unit assessments as well as the exam.
Programmes of study at Access 1, Access 2 and Access 3 are Unit-based and do not involve national examinations.
Groupings of Units built up by learners at Access 2 and Access 3 lead to course awards, such as Business, Computing, Media Studies and Social Subjects.
National Qualification Group Awards are built up from National Units. They are vocational qualifications designed to prepare people for employment, for career development or for progression to further study.
Project-based National Courses (PBNC) are usually delivered in colleges. These Courses consist of Units, and a project that has to be assessed by SQA.
To gain a Course award, PBNC candidates have to pass all component Units and achieve a pass for their project.
Unit assessments are tasks set and marked by teachers and lecturers to national standards. This is known as internal assessment. Before starting a Unit, teaching staff will make sure that students know what has to be learned and what they have to do to pass.
The students will be told in advance when the assessment will take place, and students will be awarded the Unit when they have passed all parts of the assessment satisfactorily. If they do not pass first time, they can be reassessed.
Units are marked on a pass/fail basis. It is important to be aware that passing the Unit assessments does not guarantee that the student will pass the exam. In the exam, students have to show that they can use and apply the knowledge and skills gained from the whole course.
External assessment can take many forms. In many subjects it is an exam taken in May/June, but in some subjects it is project work or folios completed during the Course. The assessment should demonstrate the knowledge and understanding students have gained while working towards their qualification. In all cases, the assessments are set and marked by people appointed by SQA, normally teachers and lecturers.
Students' performance in the external assessments decides the final Course grades that they will achieve. External assessments play an important role, too, in ensuring that the rigorous standards of National Qualifications are achieved and that all students are being assessed in the same way across Scotland.
To get a full Course award a student must pass all three National Units as well as achieve a grade in the external assessment.
Candidates achieving A-C grades pass the Course and those candidates achieving a D grade do not. The categories of outcome at Higher remain A, B, C, D and No Award.
Keep up to date