Completing a Youth Achievement Award (YAA)

The young person needs to come up with four challenges. These can be related, or totally separate. The challenges will be based on an activity or series of activities, and each challenge must take at least 10 hours to complete.

For the Silver and Gold awards the young people need to describe how they will take responsibility in their challenge.

The young person needs to choose 2-4  personal targets for their challenge. The targets are the things that they want to achieve, which could be steps that they want to take as part of their challenge, something they want to learn, something they want to improve on or a personal skill that they want to gain.

A group can work together on the same challenge, but must have different targets. The targets must be relevant to the individual young people.

They should add the date they started their challenge and the date they plan to complete.

For the Bronze award the young person needs to plan how they will evidence their challenge, targets and time, and write a few notes about this.

Note: the awards can be scribed for the young person, as long as a note is made where this has taken place

Each challenge is peer assessed at the planning stage, at the review stage for each challenge and at the evaluation for the whole award. A peer can be any other young person for example a friend, a sibling, someone else in the award group or a young person who they don’t know but has done a similar project.

The peer assessor does not need to have completed an award before.

They must tick to say that:

• the challenge is clearly described
• they have described how they will take responsibilty (for Silver and Gold awards)
• there are at least two personal targets
• the challenge will take at least ten hours to complete
• the challenge and targets are suitable for the young person

The peer assessor must sign the challenge sheet and add the date

The total time that each award should take is:

• 60 hours for Bronze
• 90 hours for Silver
• 105 hours for Gold

Each YAA challenge must take at least 10 hours. The total hours should be a whole number, so if they have completed 16 and a half hours of activity, this should be recorded as 16 hours.

The time can be recorded however the young person likes. It is usually recorded with a time log, diary, or creative method. Youth Scotland has optional evidence templates that can be downloaded here Awards Activity Sheets

The time taken on their challenge can include time spent planning and evaluating their challenge, and traveling somewhere new to complete their challenge.

The young person is asked to evidence their participation in their challenges. This helps them to show what they’ve done, as well as giving a visual record for them to look back on. They may choose to talk about their YAA in a job or college interview, and the portfolio of evidence can support this.

Evidence can be given in any form. There should be evidence that links back to all their targets, evidences the level of responsibility that they took and shows what they did to make up their challenge.

Evidence should be personalised, and come with captions explaining why it’s been included. Any group photos should have the young person highlighted.

Evidence can include:

• photos
• videos
• text
• drawings
• art work
• receipts
• tickets
• emails
• texts
• flyers
• invitations
• stickers
• witness statements
• planning sheets
• newspape clippings
• social media posts
• research
• anything else relevant

A portfolio can be a physical or online document, but it will ultimately need to be submitted online.

Any personal details that are included in evidence must be redacted before submitting to Youth Scotland.

Youth Scotland has optional evidence templates that can be downloaded here Free Awards Resources

It’s much easier to complete a YAA if evidence is gathered and included in the portfolios shortly after the activity has happened while it’s fresh in the young person’s memory. Otherwise putting the evidence together can build up into a daunting task.

For all challenges the young person should reflect on whether they met their planned targets and record this in the challenge sheet.

There is space in the challenge sheet to write in the number of hours spent on the challenge. The total hours should be a whole number.

There are four reflection statements for the young people to complete for each challenge:

• I took responsibility by… (Silver and Gold awards only)
• One thing that I learned…
• One thing that I enjoyed…
• One thing that I would do differently next time…

The finished challenges are peer assessed. This can be by the same peer assessor as before, or someone different.

They must tick to say that:

• there is clear evidence of the responsibilty level
• there is clear evidence of the hours claimed
• there is clear evidence of all personal targets
• they feel that the young person has made an achievement during this challenge

The peer assessor must sign the challenge sheet and add the date

For the Gold award only the young person needs to make a presentation about their challenges. This is to share what they’ve achieved with an audience of their choice.

Whilst planning their presentation they need to consider the following things and record them on the challenge sheet:

• where and when the presentation will take place (it can be online)
• who will be invited
• six key points that they will cover
• how they’ll present their evidence
• any arrangements they’ll need to make in advance
• any arrangements they’ll need to make on the day
• questions they think they’ll be asked

The young person should include evidence of their presentation in their portfolio.

Once their presentation is over they need to review it. There are some evaluation points to consider in the challenge sheet, and the candidate also needs to complete five reflection statements:

• The most difficult bit was…
• I learned…
• I enjoyed…
• I gained…
• One thing I would do differently next time is…

The presentation then needs to be peer assessed. This can be by the same peer assessor as before, or someone different.

They must tick to say that:

• there is clear evidence of planning the presentation
• there is clear evidence of delivery of the presentation
• there is clear evidence that the presentation was about the Gold award
• they feel that the young person has made an achievement during their presentation

The peer assessor must sign the challenge sheet and add the date

Once the award is fully finished the young person must think about what they have achieved and the difference they feel this has made to them.

They are asked to consider six statements and rate themselves against each relative to how they felt before starting their challenge. They are also asked how their award has helped them. 

They must sign and date their award.

The complete award is then peer assessed for the final time. This can be by the same peer assessor as before, or someone different.

They must tick to say that:

• they have approved all planned challenges and targets
• they have assessed all challenges
• they have assessed the presentation (for Gold only)
• at least four challenges have been completed (plus a presentation for Gold level)
• the full amount of hours have been completed
• the evaluation is completed

The peer assessor must sign the challenge sheet and add the date

The award needs to be checked twice to see if they meet all the criteria. This can be done first by the person delivering the award, for example a teacher, youth worker or young leader, and then again by someone who has completed internal verifier training. (The internal verifier was previously called agency assessor, and some paperwork hasn’t had this change made.)  This must be ticked off on the quality assurance checklist in the booklet. The criteria of the YAA are.

For the challenges:

• the challenges are clear
• there is a minimum of 2 personal targets per challenge
• the challenges and targets have been peer assessed
• the challenges took at least 10 hours each
• the challenges have been reviewed
• the completed challenges have been peer assessed
• there is clear evidence of the responsibilty level (for Silver and Gold)
• there is clear evidence for each personal target
• there is clear evidence of the hours claimed

For the presentation (Gold only):

• there is clear evidence of successful planning, preparation and delivery
  of the presentation
• the presentation has been reviewed
• the presentation challenge has been peer assessed

For the award:

• 4 or more challenges have been completed
• the correct hours have been completed
• a presentation has been completed (for Gold only)
• an award certificate has been included for prior learning (where relevant)
• the evaluation has been completed

This must be signed and dated by the worker and the internal verifier, and any notes can be added.

To submit YAAs to Youth Scotland you must complete a candidate registration form (CRF). This can be downloaded here: YAA Candidate Registration Form

This is an excel spreadsheet with multiple tabs. The first tab is a guide to completing the spreadsheet.

The text for the certificates will be lifted directly from the CRF, so please ensure that everything is spelt right.

The CRF tab needs the following details about the group:

• Local authority area – please select from the dropdown list
• Awards delivery hub
• Awards delivery group
• If your hub or group name isn’t here please contact awards@youthscotland.org.uk to find out why and get it added
• Contact email address for addressing any issues with the form

It then needs the following information about the young people:

• Booklet number (this was emailed to you alongside the digital challenge sheet)
• Candidate name
• Award level (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum)
• Date of birth
• Postcode
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Disability
• Scottish candidate number (this is needed to register the award with SQA)
• Name of award group worker

The internal verifer needs to sign and date this form. This sheet has a drop down to confirm that you have permission to share the young people’s data with Youth Scotland. If this isn’t ticked the CRF will be sent back.

The evaluation tab needs the candidates evaluation data.

The invoicing tab needs the group contact details for the invoice, and a purchase order number. We cannot process the awards without a purchase order number unless you have prepaid.

Once this spreadsheet is complete, please send it to awards@youthscotland.org.uk LINK

Youth Scotland will ask for a sample of the portfolios from the submission. You will need to scan or photograph the challenge sheets, and send these to the Awards team. These will be standardised to check that the quality of the awards is being upheld. After standardisation you will receive feedback, and you will either have your certificates sent back to you, or you will be asked to make changes before this can happen.

Standardisation happens six times a year. The candidates will then be registered with SQA, and certificates will be sent out directly from them.

If you would like to attend YAA standardisation please book here LINK