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Chapter Four Part-time work and qualifications
Where countries have distinct vocational tracks in their education system, this is usually reflected in the qualifications available to pupils. However, the question of how to give recognition to wider achievements and non-formal learning, such as might be associated with part-time employment, often remains unaddressed. As indicated above, the review did throw up some attempts to deal with what might be called 'wider achievements' and/or non-formal learning. None of these offered techniques not already known and used in Scotland, but work in England did put the issues in a slightly different, and helpful, structure.
Around the world, there are a number of baccalaureate-type qualifications which make some effort to give recognition to wider learning, but none which focus on giving recognition to part-time employment.
Perhaps the best known of these qualifications is the International Baccalaureate ( IB), which does include wider learning, but does not include it in the formal assessment and scoring for the award. In England, the interim proposals of the Tomlinson committee for a baccalaureate-type qualification at different levels appears to be taking a similar approach, recognising the value of non-formal learning and including it in the overall award, but (reports suggest) not planning to give credit value to it.
There is also a model where credit value is given for experience without a detailed examination of the outcomes. This appears to work in some parts of the American High School system and is understood to be under consideration in some parts of Australia. (This is a new reference and is still being investigated at the time of writing).
At first sight, neither of these appears attractive in the Scottish context. On the one hand, the tendency within the Scottish system has been to give formal credit - and the status that goes with it - to wider achievements, where this can be done. And on the other hand, the SCQF (and SQA's own procedures) require that credit should only be given to assessed and quality assured learning. It appears therefore that these models do not offer fresh insight into the question of how to give qualifications-related recognition to this kind of learning, although they may offer a model of recognition which should be considered in relation to the less direct approaches of models 4 and 5 ( Annex 1).
In Scotland there is a history of developments centred on short courses which would add options to broaden out the curriculum. In the school sector these started with the Munn report and were fully realised following Action Plan. From the first National Certificate Catalogue there was a suite of PSD (Personal and Social Development) modules which required evidence of planning and evaluating a broad range of experiences at different levels of sophistication. Arguably these assessed the providers more than the learners, but they were very popular and opened up the curriculum for many schools. At one time, the Work Experience modules had the highest annual uptake of any National Certificate modules. The kind of model of reflective practice and the building up of portfolios of evidence which was pioneered with these units, still exists in some areas of the SQA Portfolio, notably in some recent Higher National Units in areas such as personal development planning which may be of use in fleshing out models 2 and 5 ( Annex 1).
Partly because of the range of developments cited above, the incorporation of 'wider activities' in Group Awards in Scotland has not been a major issue in Scotland and it has been left to centres to use the extensive flexibility of the Scottish system to take steps to give recognition to these activities through existing units if they wished and were able to resource it. In the late 1990s, however, it was an issue in England and Wales, with Government proposals for a Graduation Award. QCA produced a Report on the Implementation of a Graduation Certificate (December 2001) which sets out in some detail the issues which are connected with the giving of recognition to 'wider activities' and this is a useful source. It includes sections on: providing a workable model of quality standards that can be used for the wider activities; developing a model for a transcript recording a young person's achievements; developing a mechanism for collecting, storing and collating information for the certificate; and a framework for the wider activities contributing to a Graduation Certificate. Whilst all of these issues are dealt with somewhere in the Scottish system and in current or archive Scotvec/ SQA publications, they do not appear to have been brought together in quite this way.
However, the kind of outcomes outlined above will only be achieved if the objectives of learning at work are clearly defined and the advantages can be understood and recognised by those involved: young people, teachers, trainers and employers. If 'innovative combined school-work initiatives' (Morgan, 2000) could be developed to create options for combining part-time work with school learning the advantages would be enhanced. This would mean looking at 'flexibility in the way courses are structured and studied, and the way examinations are taken and credits can be accumulated'. In Scotland, pilots are underway to offer specially designed qualifications for pupils undertaking new vocational courses which may include learning in the workplace or in workplace conditions. These qualifications might offer a means of linking part-time work and the school curriculum for some pupils, either by using the experience of part-time work to reinforce vocational learning (as in models 1 and 4 - Annex 1) or by creating mechanisms which would allow properly authenticated and quality assured evidence of competence (ie outcomes in the new qualifications) to be generated through the part-time work (as in models 2 and 3 - Annex 1).
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