Background  •  Contact Us  •  Glossary  •  Log-in

Keyword (Policy theme)

This is a vocabulary of policy areas such as Employability, Assessment, Widening participation, Curriculum, Plagiarism etc, that has been developed by the Online Services team. Terms are organised under 8 broader categories to help you locate the policy topic you require information on. Please note that this is not intended to be a final classification and the Online Services team is fully aware of the need to add new terms to this vocabulary in order to reflect changes in streams and policies. To suggest a new term to this vocabulary please contact Mike Clarke.
Scoping notes, defining what each of the terms in the Policy themes vocabulary applies to, are also available by browsing through the vocabulary here.

Keyword (Pedagogy)

A vocabulary of pedagogic terms created by the Online Services project team to help you find the information you need. It lists various pedagogic issues under few main categories: Approaches to learning and teaching, Employability and Skills, Learning and Teaching Contexts and Assessment. This is not intended to be a final classification of pedagogic terms and the Online Services team fully acknowledges the changing nature of the terminology used in the sector. Please contact Mike Clarke if you have any suggestions or questions about this vocabulary.
Scoping notes to define each of the terms listed in the Pedagogic vocabulary are also available by browsing through the vocabulary here.

HE disciplines (JACS)

Joint Academic Coding System, is a classification of subject terms produced by Universities and Colleges Admissions System (UCAS) and the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). Terms are organised hierarchically to aid the information retrieval. You can search on and select Broader terms (e.g. Social Studies) or be more specific and select any of the Narrower terms (e.g. Economics). Only those terms which have been assigned content are displayed on our site. For the full classification and more information please visit: JACS.

FE disciplines (LearnDirect)

A comprehensive classification of subject terms developed by Ufi/LearnDirect, generally found to be more suitable for those working in further education. Terms in it are organised hierarchically to aid you with the information retrieval. Please note that when browsing through the content of the services you will only see those terms which have been assigned certain content. Should you wish to view the full list of disciplines please visit LearnDirect.

Educational level

The UK Educational Levels (UKEL) list provides a set of terms to name the educational levels across all UK educational sectors. The list includes the following:

  • UK Educational Level 7 - A Level / Scottish university year 1/ rest of UK foundation year

  • UK Educational Level 8 - Scotland year 2 / rest of UK year 1

  • UK Educational Level 9 - Scotland year 3 / rest of UK year 2 (Ordinary level degree) or years 2-3 (4 & 5 year undergraduate courses)

  • UK Educational Level 10 - Scotland year 4 / rest of UK year 3 (Honours degree) or year 4 (four-year degree) or years 4-5 (five year degree course)

  • UK Educational Level 11 - Master's degree / first year PhD / final year of MEng course (four-year undergraduate engineering course leading to a master's degree)

  • UK Educational Level 12 - Finishing PhD / research degree



For more details and to see the existing mapping between the UK Educational levels and the Scottish Curriculum Qualifications Framework (SCQF) please visit UKEL or UK LOM Core.