The BCS has been offering the highly successful ECDL qualification in the UK for over ten years, in this time almost two million people have undertaken the qualification.

Some of the major motivators for its rapid and sustained uptake have been its international relevance for computer users matched with its support from a wide number of test centres across the country. Many of these centres have been able to take advantage of government funding initiatives and to this end we have always strived as an awarding body to ensure that the qualifications we offer meet the requirements for the national funding objectives or frameworks where we can. This led, some years ago, to the introduction of the BCS IT User qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland which were developed to map to the national frameworks.

Over the last two years there have been changes to the national structures and this has lead to an increased emphasis on National Occupational Standards (NOS) and the Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and similar structures in Scotland.

The new framework presents some of the greatest opportunities for us to redevelop and streamline our qualifications and therefore, from September we will be offering a new qualification portfolio, details of which you can download from this site.

The new ECDL syllabus will provide the backbone for this new portfolio providing a more flexible and relevant way to achieve full level 1, 2 and 3 qualifications in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and also to meet the requirements of the national funding objectives.

If you have any questions about the new portfolio which are not answered in the document please visit our FAQ site: https://faq.bcs.org.

New Qualifications Strategy 2009 

Syllabuses

You can also download the syllabus for each of the Version 5 modules including the new IT Security L1 (replacing the current Module 1) and the revised Module 2, IT User Fundamentals. See the documents on the right hand side.

A full set of sample tests for the new ECDL Syllabus V5.0 is now available below:

ECDL Sample Tests V5.0 (Zip) UPDATED 09/09/09

Sample Tests are now available for the Improving Productivity using IT unit at Level 2.

Improving Productivity Sample Tests (Zip)

You will need Winzip to extract the files on your PC.