Once upon a time, not so many years ago … the UK was swamped by a confusion of work-related qualifications based on classroom tests, attendance on courses and time-serving apprenticeships.

Among the main problems with the system were that:

1. Each of the assessment regimes has serious weaknesses. Even if all three (tests, attendance and time-serving) had been achieved, there was still no guarantee that the candidate was able to do the job, in real workplaces, to an agreed standard
2. The bodies that awarded such qualifications made their money from passes, so much of their energy went on balancing the credibility of the qualification with ease of achievement.
3. The bewildering selection of certificates, awards and diplomas across different qualifications gave no indication of how they related to each other and at what level
4. Employers were confused by the qualifications and so resorted to filtering out applicants for jobs by setting thresholds of the more commonly understood academic qualifications such as GCSEs, A-levels and degrees (which were usually achieved at age 16, 18 and 21 respectively)

Government funding of work-related training was the trigger for a restructuring of those old input-based qualifications, which assessed the training undertaken rather than the candidate’s ability, into a national framework.

Under the auspices of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (and its vocational precursor the National Council for Vocation Qualifications) each industry set its own National Occupational Standards (NOS) which described the outcomes of competent performance in specific functions. The training input was irrelevant, competence is judged on what people can do rather than which courses they had sat through.

NOS were expressed in “units” – chunks of work function commonly undertaken within the industry. The principle being that each unit could be achieved separately to build a portfolio of units which cover current, and perhaps future, job roles.

Of course, some functions, such as admin, were common across most industries, so existing units from other sectors could be incorporated into the NOS.

So far, so good. The NOS are really useful to employers as benchmarks of competence against which they can plan training, recruitment and business strategy. Sectors still set and review their NOS through a rigorous process of employer input and consultation.

It would have been possible to stop at that point. To provide the framework of competences against which companies too, can plan their own development and to enable people to build a portfolio of relevant unit certificates, the credibility of which are based on performance in real work situations.

But no. Our penchant for “big qualifications” ruled the day and the units were bundled up into National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs). These were often a prescribed cluster of units to be achieved but often comprised a few core units with a requirement to supplement these with a set number of “optional” units taken from a wider selection.

• First point of weakness: Candidates for employment may each have the same NVQ from the industry but the employer has no way, initially, of knowing for which combination of units the candidate’s qualification is awarded and thus in which aspects of the job role they have demonstrated competence.
• Second point of weakness: Much UK vocational training is publicly funded. Funding is based on a combination of input and achievements. The most convenient measure of outcome is achievement of the agreed NVQ. Training is therefore designed to get learners to produce the most expedient portfolio of evidence that will achieve the NVQ, as quickly as possible. This usually means a standardised programme of evidence generation with little training as possible. Opportunities for learners to customise their NVQ unit collection to suit their skills and career plans are thus severely limited.

Now, we have the Qualifications Curriculum Framework which is described by the QCA:

“At present, it is hard to understand all the different types of qualification that learners hold – what level they are, how long they take to complete, what content they cover, and how they compare to other qualifications. The new framework will help present qualifications in a way that is easy to understand and measure.”

For me, the worrying item in there is “… how long they take to complete …”.

I have recently been helping a significant UK industry to define and agree an up-to-date set of NOS which meet employers needs for units of qualification which describe the skills, knowledge and understanding which come together in real work situations to demonstrate competence. Extensive consultation and negotiation has produced what is agreed to be a comprehensive and definitive set of standards and which are currently awaiting accreditation.

However, even before that process is complete, I have just spent a few days deriving units for the Qualifications and Credit Framework for the first time. It is too early to know whether the draft units I have produced are acceptable but the process has been one of progressively weakening the standard, becoming more concerned with testing the learning process rather than workplace performance and being advised to “make it easier for candidates”. You’ll understand that I’m concerned about this.

The benefits of the QCF are trumpeted thus:

Every unit and qualification in the framework will have a credit value (one credit represents 10 hours, showing how much time it takes to complete).

For who to complete? A 16 year-old apprentice or someone with experience who may be moving into the sector and bringing lots of existing skill, knowledge and understanding with them?

… looking at the title of a qualification you will be able to see how difficult it is … GCSEs (grade A*- C) are level 2, GCE A levels are level 3 and a PhD is a level 8

Note that the comparison is with academic, knowledge-only qualifications.

The principles of the QCF are very similar to NVQs:

• Unit-based allowing smaller achievements to be recognised and accumulated to gain full qualifications.
• Different combinations of units can make up the same qualification.
• Once achieved, units can be used towards qualifications in employment, education or training.

So far, so good, but it doesn’t appear to add much to how the existing NVQ system was conceived. However, by creating knowledge-only units it also allows for combining units from education and employment. I would suggest that this is not sufficient a benefit to warrant the wholesale upheaval of the system – at significant cost.

The credibility of NVQs with employers took years to establish. With QCF units often being derived, filtered and reformulated from the NOS, employers are not so directly involved. Credibility may be even more of an issue.

From what I have seen the QCF units don’t paint a picture of competence, rather they seem to tell a story of learning about some of the NOS content.

Perhaps I’m missing something. I’m very willing to have my scepticism overturned. So if you would like to put me straight, please, leave a comment.

The industries are demanding revision because the current standards are outdated and no longer fit for purpose. They require people to be trained in processes, products, services and technologies which no longer reflect practice in the sector.

The issue for me is that the current standards were agreed just three years ago. But “things” are changing faster than the industry can foretell. The shift to on-line and direct travel booking, the trend towards customers creating their own travel packages and the availability of instant on-line information about locations, availability, prices and real customer reviews is causing customers to question what they need from the industry.

To be fair, the industry is aware of the situation and is adjusting as fast as possible. However, it sometimes struggles to find people with the right skills to deliver what’s needed. Hence the revision of the standards which will inform the curriculum.

The question is, what standards should we define as the basis for training future and current staff? Do we go for current skills and knowledge requirements and know that the new standards will be out-of-date within a year or two, or do we try to predict the future needs of the industry and risk getting it wrong?

Two recent comments by other people have been sliding into juxtaposition as we wrestle with this dilemma.

The first from Annika Small, Chief Executive of Futurelab, in Vision (issue 6) describing the effect of a rapidly changing world on curriculum design,

“We are at a point where we need to teach what no one knew yesterday, and prepare our students for what no one yet knows.”

She makes the point that what is required is no less than the transition from what is, effectively a 19th century model of education to something that is fit for purpose in the 21st century.

Secondly, Dave Cormier (on the excellent EdTechWeekly #64) describes giving someone a hammer for the first time without describing what it is useful for. Yes, they may see the nice wooden handle and they may feel the weight of the forged steel head but it will be useless to them until they catch their toe on a protruding nail, make the connection back to the hammer and recognise that it is near perfectly designed for driving the nail back into the floor.

Now consider some of the tools of social and collaborative learning such as Moodle and all those little devices that make life more connective (such as Twitter, Skype and UStream). A typical reaction from many educators will be “Yes, very clever and very pretty but I don’t see that it offers me any value in my classroom.”

I recognise that change is necessarily “a good thing” if I am instigating it, however, if someone else is saying that I have to change it is, naturally, “a bad thing”.

My concerns are that the world of education is, by-and-large and for whatever reason, one of the last great conservative bastions of resistance to change. The longer change to new approaches is resisted the more entrenched that resistance becomes, because the gap between old practices and attitudes and those that are needed now gets wider and more difficult to cross every day.

The commercial imperative for the travel industry to discover new tools which enable existing services to be delivered more efficiently and for new services to be made available is readily apparent. Shareholders will demand return on investment. Less clear are the motivators for educators to make such transitions.

Which brings me back to the travel and tourism standards. Small incremental changes to keep everyone onside, or radical reform to (hopefully) keep the standards credible for a while into a very uncertain future?

Perhaps the strategy should entail both overhaul of the standards and a programme of reform of approaches to learning in this field. Maybe some innovative yet palatable resources and progressive introduction of aspects of on-line facilities and global collaboration / connectivism might help prepare the ground with enough practitioners to create a critical mass. Perhaps.

There are multiple uncertainties there (I’ll resist the Rumsvelt reference) but without movement from industry and educators, I can’t see an alternative to missing the impossible goal of coming up with standards that will simultaneously:

• resonate with current industry practitioners and employers
• be fit for purpose now and for the next five years
• contribute to sector profitability and sustainability
• allow the skills knowledge and attitudes to be taught and developed in traditional ways.

Eggs may have to be broken.

Anyone seen that hammer?