National College Programmes and Gaining Credit

National College Programmes and Gaining Credit.

National College for Leadership are now well establsihed and have developed a number of programmes for education professionals. These tend to develop and change. The college has not worked to validate these as credit bearing programmes, nor sought to pay for accreditation of their programmes with Middlesex University. Thus, their programmes are not credit bearing in HE terms and under the rules of the QAA for HE or Credit Accumulation and Transfer schemes.

In discussions, they have informed us that their programmes do not directly link to the masters level criteria, and QAA for HE expectations about credit volume, as our own leadership programmes do.

We have worked through UCET with other HEI's to accomodate NC prrogrammes and offer the following two part- two module process so that candidates can gain academic credit for academic awards.

Concurrent Module and NCSL Programme

"What you need to do is the NCSL course and activities and put it into one of our portfolios to our specification."

Our preferred option is for candidates to sign up for their NC for Leadership programme, or similar and at the same time register and enrol as a studnet on the module "Professional Practice". The assignment for this is a portfolio of evidence which must show level 6 criteria and be absed around the format:

• Needs analysis and justification
• Planning professional learning activities, implementation/application to practice, and evaluative research
• Evidence that the planned programme has been implemented
• An analysis of personal learning and impact

 The indicative word limit for the portfolio is 6000 words (or equivalent in non text forms) and you need to show evidnece of 300 hours of learning and experiential learning activity.

Succesful candidates will gain 30 credits at level 6 (which can be useed in an MA Education award or PG Diploma in HE.

Claiming Credit Retrospectively
Credit can be "claimed" from non HEI validated programmes such as NC's, as long as students are able to produce evidence of their learning in the form of a portfolio to our specifications for the Professional Practice Module and on payment of the module fee.

Topping Up and Progression

Either routes are "topped up" by a second module, called Advanced Professional Practice" where the masters level quality of the learning emerges through a policy, resaerch, theory and practice literture review and/or action enquiry report is completed. Candidates at this point can register for the MA Education award. This will be 30 credits at level 7.

Candidates have to be registered for this at the start of the University module.

Materials

Professional Practice Outline

Advanced Professional Practice Outline

Dual Module Guide

Harvard Referencing

Application Forms from  i.terrell@mdx.ac.uk