Give us a break – but make it meaningful

Author

Dr Nick Watmough

Quality Enhancement & Standards Specialist, QAA

As we launch a major project to refresh our suite of Characteristics Statements, QAA's Nick Watmough considers their value – and the timely and vital subject of short-cycle courses, the area of provision on which this process will focus first.

How do you tell a martin from a pipit? How do you tell myoglobin from penicillin? And how do you tell an MSc from a PhD?

As a keen birder, unreconstructed biochemist and higher education quality specialist, I'd say that the answers to all three questions are surprisingly similar. I suppose one might say you can distinguish between them by considering their core characteristics and differences, and where they stand in relation to one another.

And we don't have to do this in a knowledge vacuum. Some degree of expert consensus on these relevant characteristics will of course help our efforts to make such distinctions. It's usually not enough after all just to say that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck (or indeed like DNA or a doctorate) then that's probably what it is.

That's because these things can of course be so significant. And in terms of our distinctions between the levels of tertiary education, all these qualifications – and the learning on which they are based – have the power to transform people's lives – and to change our societies, cultures, industries and economies – and so it's really rather important to match the individual learner with the right qualification.

This is why we developed Characteristics Statements. Characteristic Statements not only show the distinctive features of qualifications but also delineate the different levels of study required to obtain specific awards, and thereby help to elucidate the ladder of progression which runs between them.

QAA is the curator of UK tertiary education's Characteristics Statements. These stand within the quality ecosystem alongside the Quality Code and its accompanying sections of Advice and Guidance, the Frameworks for Higher Education Qualifications and the Subject Benchmark Statements as key sets of reference points for tertiary education in the UK – the sector-owned pillars which uphold our quality and standards, if you like – published by QAA in consultation and collaboration with stakeholders across our sector.

Each Characteristics Statement outlines the distinctive features of qualifications at particular levels of tertiary study, describing each qualification in terms of its purpose, general characteristics and generic outcomes. (They don't of course detail expected subject knowledge: that's the province of our Subject Benchmark Statements.) They tease out the differences between expectations and graduate attributes at different levels of study, and – while remaining agnostic on curricula – they address, in general terms, how we educate people to get them to those levels, in relation to our approaches to learning and assessment.

They provide a framework through which, for example, any provider conferring a Master's degree, or designing or validating provision at that level (or, by extension, any employer considering the CV of a Master's graduate or any student thinking of enrolling on a Master's programme) can be confident that they understand the general expectations, functions and outcomes of that level of study – in other words, what it means, in generic terms, to be someone who holds a Master's degree.

But these Characteristics Statements don't focus only on such well-known academic qualifications as Master's degrees and doctorates. It's clearly important that we recognise the value of learning and qualifications at all levels of tertiary study – the value gained by individual students and by the social, economic and industrial infrastructures which their contributions as graduates support.

This is why we at QAA have already published Characteristics Statements for such key qualifications as Higher Education Apprenticeships and Micro-Credentials – and it's why we have now, at the start of a new cycle of work creating a refreshed and expanded set of Characteristics Statements, chosen to focus first on short-cycle awards. (And, with a planned publication date of May 2026, we are currently seeking volunteers from the UK tertiary sector to join the reference group for this Characteristic Statement.)

Short-cycle courses – which in the past have rather unhelpfully been described as 'sub-bachelor' provision – are courses which take place at levels of study equivalent to the first two levels of undergraduate study, and lead to awards such as HNCs, HNDs, Foundation Degrees, Certificates of Higher Education and Diplomas of Higher Education. (These stages of study are known as levels 4 and 5 in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and as levels 7 and 8 in Scotland.) These courses are often used to provide vocational qualifications for employment or to support students' progression into the Bachelor's degree level of undergraduate study.

Today, the UK government's explicit emphasis on lifelong learning as a key driver of industrial and economic growth, community empowerment and widening participation in tertiary education has again underlined the importance of these short-cycle qualifications.

Indeed, the government has stressed the need for all parts of the sector to contemplate a move to broaden its offer from its traditional focus on Bachelor's, Master's and doctoral degrees (once thought the be-all-and-end-all of target awards), if lifelong learning strategies are to succeed in appealing to and inspiring prospective learners' ambitions to return to education, by providing realistically attainable study goals which will benefit their careers and their lives, and ensuring an appropriate balance between their investment of time and the rewards to be gleaned.

Students, of course, need to know at what levels of learning they are studying and what volume of study is required and which qualification will be the outcome of their hard work– and providers and employers need to know that too. That's why clarifying the distinctive features of clearly defined awards through an expanded suite of Characteristics Statements is so essential.

Regrettably, even now when Level 4 or 5 qualifications are taken as exit awards, by students whose circumstances don’t allow them to progress onto their next levels of study they are still perceived by some (often, it should be said, by those outside the sector) not as badges of attainment but as a sign of failure – even though their own institutions give equal weight to celebrating these achievements through their graduation celebrations alongside more traditionally recognised awards. As such, they may wrongly be perceived as consolation prizes for students who've not achieved the qualifications they originally intended to reach.

But this interpretation – a piece of reductive thinking which supposes such break points signify bad outcomes – fails to recognise the significant achievements of students who may have all kinds of reasons for not continuing their studies Moreover, it also runs counter to the thrust of an emerging national skills policy which calls for the positive recognition of meaningful break points and their associated qualifications in degree programmes.

As such, it's difficult to see how either students or providers can be seen as falling short when attaining such outcomes – or why our systems and approaches should ever seek to disincentivise such achievements.

I've been privileged to witness the positive value of these short-cycle courses and qualifications not only in my work at QAA – and in my years as an exam board chair at the University of East Anglia – but also in my more recent role at Cornwall College where I serve as a co-opted member of the college's higher education committee.

Just a few weeks ago in Truro Cathedral, I had the great pleasure, and honour, of celebrating their graduation with the recipients of awards earnt from a range of short-cycle courses offered by Cornwall College – and the opportunity to see how much these achievements rightly mean to their recipients, and to their families, and to their futures, offering robust foundations which can make real differences to their lives.

What these short-cycle qualifications can do – when done well – is to embed permeability between professional practice and study – and position this approach as a positive alternative to the traditional three years of immersive tertiary study.

However, this really isn’t about a competition between these different modes of study. It's about giving students choice, the opportunity to choose whichever mode suits them best and serves them best at any given time in their life and whatever stage of their career that they decide that it's right for them.

That's where our refreshed Characteristics Statements can add value and clarity: not by prioritising one way of learning above another, but by demonstrating and promoting the rich diversity our sector can offer.