What SCQF Means for You

The Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework (SCQF) is a way of comparing Scottish qualifications.

Any qualification you get, whether from school, university or college gets a level between one and 12 that shows how difficult the learning is. The SCQF has 12 levels. The different levels indicate the level of difficulty of a particular qualification, with level 12 being the most demanding. Credit points are a way of showing how much time it takes, on average, to complete a qualification or learning programme.

The SCQF is important because it helps colleges, universities, training centres and employers understand your qualifications and the levels at which you have studied. It also helps you to compare and understand the different requirements of qualifications. 

Some employers, such as local authorities, use SCQF levels instead of, or as well as, different types of qualifications when they advertise jobs. Some organisations, such as university admissions departments and employers within Social Services are also using the SCQF to help with the ‘Recognition of Prior Learning’ (RPL) of potential learners or current or potential employees. 

This means that the employers can consider how difficult it was to achieve your qualification rather than just looking at your grades.

SCQF credit points are also important and helpful if you are thinking of studying or working abroad. The SCQF levels are referenced against the European Qualifications Framework (EQF) which means that your qualifications can be easily compared against those in Europe, helping employers or admissions teams consider your application against their required levels.

While the SCQF credit points will not directly get you a job or into university they will certainly help show admissions officers and employers the difficulty of each qualification and how much learning you had to do to achieve them. 

Often universities and job descriptions will have required levels of study or knowledge. So even if you didn't achieve the highest UCAS points in the class they can see how difficult the learning actually was to be able to achieve the qualification.

Something that people often get confused with is SCQF credit points and UCAS tariff points. Many people think that they are the same thing, but they are two separate point systems. UCAS tariff points is the grade you have achieved whereas SCQF credit points is a measure of how much you need to learn to get the qualification. (1 credit = 10 hours of learning)