Introducing Unit Specifications and Unit Assessment Support Packs (UASPs)

2. Introducing Unit Specifications and Unit Assessment Support Packs (UASPs) Modern Languages National 3/4/5

3. Lorna McMurray Principal Verifier (Spanish) Colin Meikle Senior Team Leader (Spanish)

4. Key points: ML Units • Standard remains the same • Units have a hierarchical structure that provides clear progression from National 3 to Higher  • Learning and assessment activities across the Contexts society, learning, employability, culture • Added Value Unit assessment at National 4 increases personalisation and choice

5. Unit Structure

6. Unit Assessment • Assessments can be designed to provide evidence across more than one Outcome or Unit – combined assessment • Flexible and open Evidence Requirements • Greater range of techniques and methodologies for assessment – encouraged through Unit assessment support packages and Unit and Course Support Notes (www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/47415.html) • More opportunities to gather naturally occurring evidence – assessment as part of learning and teaching

7. Unit Specifications • Unit Specification is the core document, referencing the following key elements: • Outcome(s) • Assessment Standards • Evidence Requirements

8. Unit Assessment Support Packages (UASPs) : Purpose UASPs can be used to: • Assess your candidates • Adapt for your own assessment programmes • Help you develop your own assessments

9. UASPs : Key Features • Valid from August 2013 • Designed to encourage professional judgement • Provide broad-based tasks – assist assessors in choosing appropriate Context(s) and forms of evidence • Show range of approaches to generating assessment evidence • Give information on the type of evidence which could be gathered and how this is to be judged against Assessment Standards

10. ML UASPs Package 1 • Combined assessment approaches exemplified at Nat 3/4/5 Package 2 • Unit by Unit assessment approaches exemplified at Nat 3/4/5 Package 3 • Unit by Unit assessment approaches exemplified at Nat 3 and combined assessment approaches exemplified at Nat 4/5

11. National 4 Added Value Unit • Makes the Course more than the sum of its parts • Builds on current Course assessment and Group Award approaches • Defined as breadth, challenge and/or application as outlined in Building the Curriculum 5 • May involve accumulation, assimilation, integration and/or application of skills, knowledge and understanding • Controlled assessment –setting conducting and marking

12. N4 AV Unit: Modern Languages • Focus on challenge and application of language skills • Unit Specification and Unit Assessment Support Package (UASP) • Assesses skills in reading, listening and talking • Internally assessed as pass or fail

13. N5 Internal Assessment of Course Components • Controlled assessment is SQA’s approach to developing assessments (setting), the conditions of assessment (conducting), and marking assessments (marking). • SQA is introducing controlled assessment for non-question paper components of the Added Value Unit and new National Courses atNational 5, Higher and Advanced Higher.

14. N5 Performance (Talking) Controlled assessment The Performance is: • set by centres within SQA guidelines • conducted under a high degree of supervision and control   • Evidence will be internally marked by centre staff in line with SQA marking instructions. • Marking will be quality assured by SQA. • The performance will be recorded.

15. Moving on • Workshop 1 and 2 will give you the opportunity to look at the Unit Specifications and Unit Assessment Support Packages in detail.