NextGen: HN - Meta-skills

Meta-skills are transferable behaviours and abilities that help you adapt and succeed in life, study and work.

There are three broad categories of meta-skills:

  • Self-management – focusing, integrity, adapting, initiative.
  • Social intelligence – communicating, feeling, collaborating, leading.
  • Innovation – curiosity, creativity, sense-making, critical thinking.

What's different about NextGen: HN?

NextGen: HN courses will include the development of meta-skills as part of their core content, complementing vocational, academic and technical aspects of the learning. Employers, lecturers and training providers have always supported learners to develop meta-skills, even if they haven’t used this term. By formally including meta-skills now, we can make this support much more visible, and learners will be better able to actively develop and articulate their career-ready skills, whatever their future pathways.

Employers in every sector of our economy are increasingly prioritising the behavioural or “meta” skills of their employees. Technical know-how, job specific content and business operating environments change quickly. Meta skills offer organisations greater adaptability and responsiveness to change...

Universities Scotland

We look for the ability to get on with other people, be able to work in a team, empathy, well presented, being on time for interview, demonstrate a good work ethic, all backed up by good references. Experience is helpful, but if they don't have these other qualities then they generally don't work out.

Michael Kyle, Kyle Farm

What we do is so much more than simply prepare people for work. We help to build (re-build in some cases) the whole person through our courses, and meta-skills are an important building material.

Society needs people who understand who they are and what their character strengths are. With this knowledge, they can go out into society and be — not simply employees — but core contributors to society in all sorts of ways. Of course, this can be through employment, but also be through their myriad interactions and ideas.

Mary-Frances Forry, Lecturer in Social Sciences

Resources

Meta-skills – SQA Academy modules for learners

Designed specifically for NextGen: HN, these modules can help you to better understand and work with meta-skills. The modules will build your understanding of meta-skills and guide you through the process of meta-skills development.

NextGen: HN – Meta-skills for learners

Meta-skills – Development log 

This optional Development Log can be downloaded and used to record and track your progress with the meta-skills outcome.

Meta-skills – Development log (889 KB)

Meta-skills – Assessment information for learners

This document explains how you are being assessed and graded on your work with meta-skills within your NextGen: HN qualification.

Meta-skills - Assessment information for learners

Meta-skills – Stepping up from HNC to HND

This short document explains what to expect from meta-skills if you are continuing from HNC to HND.

Meta-skills — stepping up from HNC to HND in NextGen: HN

Meta-skills – SQA Academy module for practitioners

This course offers information and guidance for practitioners about the inclusion, delivery, and assessment of meta-skills in NextGen: HN qualifications. It also functions as a companion guide for the learner modules, which offer optional activities.

NextGen: HN – Meta-skills for practitioners

Meta-skills – Assessment and grading information for centres

This document contains assessment and grading information for meta-skills, including evidence requirements, additional guidance and an assessment checklist for practitioners.

Meta-skills - Assessment and grading information for centres

Meta-skills: Stepping up from HNC to HND

This short document provides guidance for practitioners when learners are continuing their meta-skills development from HNC to HND.

Meta-skills — stepping up from HNC to HND - advice for practitioners

Meta-skills Development Log

The optional Development Log can be downloaded and used by learners to record and track their progress with the meta-skills outcome.

An accessible PDF version compatible with screen readers and assistive technologies.

Meta-skills Development Log - PDF

An MS Word version, which practitioners can edit and adapt to contexts.  
When adapted, we recommend that you publish the form as a tagged PDF to ensure maximum accessibility.

For guidance, please visit WebAIM: PDF Accessibility - Accessible Forms in Acrobat

Meta-skills Development Log - Word Doc

UShare Resources

UShare offers a collection of resources which relate to the three key processes of meta-skills development: self-awareness, goal setting and reflective practice.

Meta-skills resources on Ushare

Skills 4.0: a skills model to drive Scotland’s future

The meta-skills model used in Next Gen HN, developed by Skills Development Scotland (SDS) and the Centre for Work-based Learning Scotland.

Skills 4.0: A skills model to drive Scotland’s future

 

 

 

We asked subject-specialist writers with experience of delivering meta-skills in NextGen: HN Qualifications to write a ‘Meta-skills in Practice’ guide, giving us a sense of how they approach the integration of meta-skills within course delivery. Qualifications are listed below.

We propose a refreshed purpose for colleges that is unambiguously focused on helping businesses to grow by making sure they have access to people with the technological, vocational, and 'meta' skills needed in the decade ahead - and beyond.

Paul Little, Principal and Chief Exec, City of Glasgow College

Practically speaking, the challenge isn’t implementing meta-skills, which have always underpinned our practice, but in signposting them to learners in ways they can quantify and observe. This is vital because our learners will be dependent on these core skills for their employability.

David Wood, Lecturer in Acting and Performance