How Europe would see the new British initiative for standardising vocational qualifications.

HOW EUROPE WOULD SEE THE NEW BRITISH INITIATIVE FOR STANDARDISING VOCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS

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.

Co-ordination with Europe

First, the new Council seems to have decided deliberately or by oversight to be one pace out of step with the agreed European classification of qualifications: for example, qualifications which the Europeans would put at Level 2 (under the system agreed by the EC body that deals with these matters, known as CEDEFOP) will in Britain be put at Level 3. This is the main level of craft qualification in France and Germany.(1) Being out of step in this way provides room for an additional British low-level qualification, at what is to be our Level 1; this seems to be at present the main level of qualification under our Youth Training Scheme.(2) There is no European counterpart to this level.

What is at issue here is partly only a matter of unnecessarily confusing nomenclature; but …