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How Europe Would See the New British Initiative for Standardising Vocational Qualifications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

S.J. Prais
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Extract

Among the many recent endeavours of HM Government to improve vocational training is the creation of a body to bring coherence into Britain's so-called ‘jungle’ of vocational qualifications, spawned over the decades and centuries by a myriad of examining and award-granting organisations issuing qualifications at a variety of uncoordinated levels. For those familiar with the qualification systems of Continental Europe (hereafter ‘Europe’, for short), some doubts are nevertheless raised by the principles on which the new National Council for Vocational Qualifications (NCVQ) proposes to work; these doubts relate, not to details which can safely be left to technical experts for due resolution, but to matters of fundamental principle deserving wider consideration at the outset. We focus here on three issues: co-ordination of levels of qualification with Europe; the balance of theory and practice in qualifying tests; and the potentially self-defeating effects of introducing too low an initial level of validated qualification.

Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 129 , August 1989 , pp. 52 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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References

(1) The ‘main craft level’ (for example for electrician, mechanical fitter) is usually reached after three years' apprenticeship; it corresponds in Britain to the standards of City and Guilds part II examinations.

(2) It is rumoured that the Government proposes to set NVQ Level 2 as the standard for the YTS; that will not of course be confused with the European Level 2 by anyone with the patience to read this Note.

(3) Report by D. Fennell QC, HMSO, 1988, p.30 (emphasis added).

(4) ‘Competence must be assessed under conditions as close as possible to those under which it would be normally practiced’, said The NVQ Criteria and Related Guidance (NVO, 1988, p. 9).

(5) See the Engineering Council's Annual Report for 1988, p. 17.

(6) The clothing industry training board put it very simply in its information sheet, intended to attract candidates: ‘To get a qualification you do not have to sit exams or do any written tests.’

(7) The NCVQ, on the other hand, is at pains to make clear that it does 'not imply building into the requirement of an NCVQ knowledge and understanding beyond the needs of the employment to which the award relates' (ibid., p.10).