The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF)

The aims of the SCQF

The general aims of the SCQF are to:

• help people of all ages and circumstances to access appropriate education and training over their lifetime to fulfil their personal, social and economic potential.
• enable employers, learners and the public in general to understand the full range of Scottish qualifications, how the qualifications relate to each other, and how the different types of qualifications can contribute to improving the skills of the workforce.

The SCQF provides a national vocabulary for describing learning opportunities and thereby makes the relationships between qualifications clearer. It will clarify entry and exit points and routes for progression within and across education and training sectors and increase the opportunities for credit transfer. In these ways it will assist learners to plan their progress and minimise duplication of learning.

Two measures are used to place qualifications and learning programmes within the Framework. These are the levels of the outcomes of learning and the volume of these outcomes, described in terms of SCQF credit points. The SCQF has 12 levels ranging from school based qualifications through to Doctorates at the highest level. SCQF credit points are used to quantify the outcomes of learning and give them value or currency. The allocation of credit is based on the amount of time that an average learner at a specified level might expect to take to achieve the outcomes.

Further details of all aspects of the SCQF can be found at www.scqf.org.uk