Big Portfolio Changes from Outside but we're winning

October has arrived and we are in the midst of finalising development plans for next year. HN Modernisation almost completed, new National Certificate Groups Awards under way, some more Skills for Work on horizon. Curriculum for Excellence and what happens to some Int1 and Int2 Courses still in the big policy mixing pot. Scottish Vocational Awards under spotlight through the Scottish Skills Strategy. Professional Development Awards and National Progression Awards providing smaller chunks of certificated learning are in demand across a number of sectors.

The Qualification teams are all involved in significant developments in our sector portfolios and as the thirst particularly in the post school sector continues for the Quality Assurance that SQA can bring to life long learning it looks like we will be busier than ever in the next financial year.

• Good to get Motherwell College on board as Auto Desk lead centre and AdamSmith College on board as Adobe lead centre for DIVA . Glad too for the support of staff like Colin Maxwell who is one of two 'Adobe education leaders' in Scotland, and one of only 15 in the UK overall. The Adobe 'education leader' programme has run successfully in the US for some time and opened up to the rest of the world in 2005.
  
• Great news too that Strathclyde Police have adopted the Internet Safety Unit as part of Police training programme.
  

I am off to Westminster tomorrow to hear I suspect that rest of UK should be doing what we have already done in Scottish Further Education around working with vendors and computing industry. We should really start exporting it south as well as to our overseas customers ;-)