Completing a Youth Achievement Award (YAA)

A young person can choose to complete their award all in one challenge or can spread their learning across as many as four challenges (each at least 10 hours). For every challenge, a young person will set 4 personal targets (specific things they would like to achieve or skills they would like to build).  

The challenge and targets should reflect the responsibility level of the award they are completing (Bronze, Silver or Gold). 

Note: the awards can be scribed for a young person, as long as a note is made where this has taken place. 

Each challenge is peer assessed at the planning and review stages. A peer can be any other young person, for example a friend, a sibling, someone else in the award group or a young person who they don’t know but who has done a similar project. The peer assessor does not need to have completed an award before.  

In the planning stage, peer assessors will confirm that: 

• The challenge is clearly described 
• The challenge meets the responsibility level of the award 
• Four personal targets have been set 
• The challenge and targets are suitable for the young person 

Peer assessors will then sign and date the challenge sheet. 

The Bronze, Silver and Gold award each require 60+ hours of learning. For the Gold award, a young person will also create and deliver a presentation on their experience (this does not count toward the 60+ hours needed for the award). 

Young people can use the Challenge Time Log in their award booklet to help them track and record the time they’ve spent working on their challenge. Time that is spent planning, traveling somewhere to complete a challenge or completing the evaluation all counts towards the award and can be recorded on the Time Log.  

The young person is asked to evidence their participation in their challenges. This helps them to show what they’ve done, as well as giving a visual record for them to look back on. They may choose to talk about their YAA in a job or college interview, and the portfolio of evidence can support this.

Evidence can be given in any form. There should be evidence that links back to all their targets, evidences the level of responsibility that they took and shows what they did to make up their challenge.

Evidence should be personalised, and come with captions explaining why it’s been included. Any group photos should have the young person highlighted.

Evidence can include:

• photos
• videos
• text
• drawings
• art work
• receipts
• tickets
• emails
• texts
• flyers
• invitations
• stickers
• supporting statements
• planning sheets
• newspaper clippings
• social media posts
• research
• anything else relevant

A portfolio can be a physical or online document, but it will ultimately need to be submitted online.

Any personal details that are included in evidence must be redacted before submitting to Youth Scotland.

Youth Scotland has an optional template of an evidence booklet that can be downloaded here:

Evidence Booklet

It’s much easier to complete a YAA if evidence is gathered and included in the portfolios shortly after the activity has happened while it’s fresh in the young person’s memory. Otherwise putting the evidence together can build up into a daunting task.

As part of the Gold Youth Achievement Award, a young person must create and deliver a presentation on their award experience. The time spent working on this presentation does not count towards the 60+ hours needed to complete this award. 

In the Gold award booklet, there is space to plan this presentation, including logistics like the date, time, location and audience, as well as the media that will be used and the key points the presentation will cover. 

Evidence from the presentation (including materials used, photos/videos from the day, etc.) should be included in the young person’s portfolio of evidence. In the Gold award booklet, there is also space to collect short statements from two of the presentation audience members and for the young person to reflect on their presentation in several open-ended questions. 

At the end of their challenge, a young person will review what they did to work towards each of their personal targets. They will also reflect on the skills they built and on their personal development as a result of their awards experience. 

Completed challenges are then peer assessed. This can be done by the same peer assessor as before or someone different.   

Peer assessors will confirm: 

• The planning pages for the challenge have been completed 
• The time spent on the challenge has been accurately recorded 
• There is evidence of the young person working towards their personal targets 
• There is evidence that the young person has met the responsibility level of the award 
• The portfolio of evidence is well-organised and presents evidence linking to the challenge and personal targets 
• The challenge review has been completed 
• (For the Gold award) The young person has planned, delivered and reviewed a presentation on their award experience

Peer assessors will then sign and date the challenge sheet. 

The Youth Achievement Award needs to be checked twice to see that it meets all the criteria. This should be done first by the person delivering the award (for example, a teacher, youth worker or young leader) and then again by someone who has completed internal verifier training.

On Awards Force, you will find a quality assurance checklist to complete. This must be signed and dated by the worker. You will then be asked to add the name and email of the person who will IV the awards. They will then be sent a link to log in and check the YAA samples and complete the IV section. 

For the Bronze, Silver and Gold awards, the criteria are: 

• One to four challenges have been completed 
• The correct hours have been completed 
• The evaluation has been completed 
• (For the Gold award only) A presentation has been completed 
• (If relevant) An award certificate has been included for prior learning 

A young person may have chosen to complete their award across more than one challenge. Each challenge should be reviewed to ensure: 

• The challenge is clear 
• There are four personal targets per challenge 
• The challenge and targets have been peer assessed 
• The challenge took at least 10 hours 
• Challenges have been reviewed 
• Completed challenges have been peer assessed 
• There is clear evidence of the responsibility level 
• There is clear evidence for each personal target 
• There is clear evidence of the hours claimed 
• (For the Gold award only) There is clear evidence of successful planning, preparation and delivery of the presentation 
• (For the Gold award only) The presentation has been reviewed 
• (For the Gold award only) The presentation has been peer assessed 

Youth Achievement Awards must be submitted to Youth Scotland through our online submission platform, Awards Force. Once you have logged into your Awards Force account, you will register the candidate for each award on the Candidate Registration tab. (Please note: the text you provide will be used for the award certificate, so you should ensure that all names are spelled correctly). 

On the Candidate Registration tab, you will be asked to provide the following details about your group: 

• Local Authority Area  
•  Awards Delivery Hub 
• Awards Delivery Group 

You will then provide the following information about the young person who has completed the award: 

• Name of Candidate 
• Booklet Number 
• Scottish Candidate Number 
• Date of birth 
• Postcode 
• Gender 
• Ethnicity 
• Disability 
• An overview of their evaluation information

If you have questions or are having trouble accessing your Awards Force account, contact awards@youthscotland.org.uk. 

Youth Scotland will ask for a sample of the portfolios from the submission on Awards Force. For Bronze and Silver awards, we will ask for 2 samples or 10% of the total submissions (whichever is greater). For Gold and Platinum awards we will be sampling 100% of submitted awards.  

In the evidence section of Awards Force, you will be able to upload a scan, photograph  or PDF version of the challenge sheets for each award. This will then be standardised to check that the quality of the awards is being upheld. After standardisation, you will receive feedback from the awards team.  

Standardisation happens in the last week of each calendar month. The candidates will then be registered with SQA and certificates will be sent out directly from them.