The paper published today includes proposed descriptions of the attributes of holders of each main higher education qualification. The framework gives guidance to universities and colleges on designing academic courses to ensure those outcomes are achieved. It provides a basis on which standards can be both assessed and assured. By clarifying the standards to be associated with named qualifications, the framework, and the parallel framework for England Wales and Northern Ireland will help uphold the international standing of all UK higher education. Describing learning The framework will help to describe learning in a number of ways.
Credit provides a measure of the amount of learning.
This is an important measure that will be used across the entire SCQF and provides learners, employers and others with a common measure of how one qualification or programme compares with another. Credit can also promote the transfer of learning from one context to another as individual circumstances, aspirations and lifelong learning requirements develop and change. The notion of 'level' of study or achievement provides another means of describing learning and differentiating one qualification from another. Level provides a means of structuring programmes so that progression is secured by imposing increasing demands on the learner, over time, in terms of the acquisition of knowledge and skills, the capacity for conceptualisation, and increasing reliance on their own learning abilities. The levels of the SCQF are defined by broad descriptions of outcomes against which all qualifications and individual learner achievement can be positioned.