Certification of Hi5 and Dynamic Youth Awards During Covid-19

All Hi5 and Dynamic Youth Awards submitted for certification and in the professional judgement of the award group worker has met all assessment criteria will be resulted. Sampling, if appropriate, will be carried out retrospectively and within six months of submission.

Please note: We try to mirror SQA quality assurance processes as closely as possible. The SQA have now advised that the retention of candidate evidence has been extended from 3 weeks to 6 months. What this means in practice is that all Hi5 and Dynamic Youth Awards submitted for resulting must be retained and available for sampling for six months from the submission date. This allows Youth Scotland be more flexible in the way we quality assure and result submissions. 

Certification of Awards

Before completed Youth Achievement Awards can be presented for certification they must go through a formal process of quality assurance.

The Quality Assurance Process

Assessment

The worker who has supported the young people with their awards checks to ensure that they meet the assessment criteria as outlined at the end of the award booklet.

Internal Verification

The awards are then internally verified by a worker within the Operating Agency who has completed the necessary internal verification training.

Standardisation

Finally the awards (or a sample of) are assessed by a panel of internal verifiers at a national event. This is to ensure that all Operating Agencies are assessing and verifying awards to the required standard. The awards are then resulted by a lead internal verifier and externally verified by SQA.

Registering Candidates

If you wish to register candidates and present awards for certification you should contact your Operating Agency and advise them of progress. If you have a specific timeline you are working to please allow sufficient time for stages 1 and 2 of the quality assurance process to be carried out and all necessary paperwork to be returned to Youth Scotland before any deadline. Please see below for the schedule of meetings and submission deadlines to assist with your forward planning.

You will need to complete a Candidate Registration Form (CRF) which can be downloaded from the bottom of this page and return this fully completed to Youth Scotland before the submission deadline. Standardisation dates and submission deadlines can be found at the bottom of this page.

Please note that we cannot accept postal or faxed CRFs as these are required in electronic format to allow Youth Scotland to upload the details electronically into the SQA system.

Please note that a representative of the Operating Agency must attend the standardisation meeting if you are presenting awards for certification. To attend please use the Eventbrite link at the bottom of this page and note the booking deadline dates. 

If it is not possible for anyone from the Operating Agency to attend the meeting through prior agreement the portfolios can be sent to Youth Scotland ahead of the event. This is subject to a £40 administration and handling fee, plus return postage and packaging.

If you have any queries or difficulties when booking please contact the Awards team immediately on awards@youthscotland.org.uk or 0131 554 2561. We are unable to allow admission to this event without places having been booked in advance of the deadline.

Youth Achievement Awards Standardisation and Internal Verification Meetings - Dates & Deadlines

9 February - deadline 2 February

21 April - deadline 14 April

4 June - deadline 28 May

24 August - deadline 17 August

14 October - deadline 7 October

1 December - 24 November