Qualifications for different sectors and subjects
The sector subject framework has been developed to categorise qualifications for use across relevant education agencies and bodies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The regulatory authorities use the sector subject categories to:
- report progress to ministers on matters of accreditation
- classify all accredited qualifications and units
- as search criteria on the National Database of Accredited Qualifications (opens in new window) (NDAQ) website
- support the new five-day accreditation process
- support the application of sanctions on awarding bodies.
The agencies and bodies who use the categories do so in a variety of ways. Please see pages 6–11 of sector and subject categories (joint statement), downloadable from this page, for details of how they will use the categories.
Aims and purpose of sector subject categories
The primary purpose of the sector and subject categories is to provide a rational system of categories which have been developed to:
- be comprehensive enough to cover all qualification types, subject areas and employment sectors
- be flexible enough to be used by all agencies and departments, meeting their specific needs
- complement and support the National Qualifications Framework (NQF)
- reduce confusion among users with regard to the multiplicity of sector and subject frameworks currently in use by various education bodies
- facilitate, where appropriate, the supply of information between agencies and departments, for example data exchange and common reporting mechanisms
- complement and/or replace existing classification systems
- underpin the NDAQ, which contains details of all accredited qualifications in the NQF
- link to comparable frameworks and databases.
Conversion tables for other classification systems
Conversion tables (maps) have been produced and agreed with the relevant organisations, showing how the sector and subject categories equate to other popular classification systems currently in use.
LearnDirect Classification System
The LearnDirect Classification System (LDQS) is a framework of some 5,000 categories, structured in a hierarchy of several tiers. It is used by LearnDirect to classify and categorise all the courses and qualifications currently available in the UK.
Joint Academic Coding System
The Joint Academic Coding System (JACS) is a system of categories used to logically classify higher education courses by their subject content.