Empowering learners: A teacher’s guide to My Profile

What My Profile is 

It’s a digital space for people to document who they are, what they love and what they’re striving for. It means that learners who find it challenging to articulate their abilities and showcase themselves in the best possible light have a tool to do this.  

Individual’s profiles will belong to them and travel with them as they transition through their learner journey, from primary school right through to adulthood.  

Some key features: 

• upload and showcase: their achievements, skills, qualifications, hobbies, learning and more  
• set and track goals: create personalised goals and track progress towards achieving them  
• reflect and grow: engage in discussions with adults on self-reflection, this’ll help support the self-reflection process and let individuals identify their strengths and area for development 

Encourage your pupils to tell their story and start building their personal profile today!

Who’s been involved 

We’ve been working in partnership with Education Scotland and a National Co-design Group since December 2022 to determine key issues right through to guiding the approach and solutions.  The National Co-design Group has representation national, regional and local levels from a wide range of settings including: 

• SQA 
• SCQF 
• Youth Scotland 
• early years 
• primary schools 
• secondary schools 
• youth sector 
• community learning 
• local authorities 
• colleges 
• universities  
• employers

Our co-design approach 

Throughout 2023, we’ve co-designed with learners and educators to develop and test My Profile. Over 100 people were involved in the co-design sessions.  

91 pupils/learners: 

• 34 primary pupils in P6 to P7 
• 17 secondary pupils in S1 to S3 
• 31 secondary school pupils in S4 to S6 
• 9 college learners in S5 to S6 
• 20+ pupils with additional support needs 

11 educators:  

• 2 primary school teachers 
• 3 secondary school teachers 
• 3 college staff members 
• 3 stakeholders from local authorities, Education Scotland, SDS 

Young people’s innovative ideas from our co-design sessions have significantly shaped My Profile. These fresh perspectives, often beyond our design team’s initial scope, have improved the final product.    

The vision and future of My Profile

1. Reduced costs and one single solution 

Currently there’s many digital and paper-based profile solutions, as well as duplication of effort and multiple costs. Our vision is for My Profile to be the national digital solution, adopted across the whole of Scotland. It means there will be a single solution, reduced costs and consistent quality.  

2. Learner owns their profile  

A learner’s profile right now moves between institution and doesn’t move with them. With My Profile, this is owned by the learner and will travel with them throughout their journey.  

3. Holistic view of the learner 

We want the Profile to provide a holistic view of learners. It’ll give their whole story of who they are and what they can do including achievements and skills development in and out of an education setting.  

4. Help articulate their story  

With My Profile, this’ll help discussions between learners and practitioners. It can also be used for applications and parental reporting.  

5. Data to help make decisions  

Currently, there’s fragmented and non-existent data in many cases. With My Profile, national, regional and local data will help target interventions to support learners and macro data to support strategic decisions. We’ll be looking to develop a teacher/institution dashboard in the future to streamline data. 

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