As we all know anyone can get themselves a kit of tools and go out there and do plumbing, there in no legislation in place to stop them. However, if someone goes to college and comes away with at least the underpinning knowledge they are at least informed on what they should be doing and if they have the work to be assessed on for the NVQ, employed or self employed, then they are going down the right road, it is down to the integrity of the Assessor after that.
Phil, thanks for coming back on this one. Its interesting that the new QCF is 3 out of 5 assessments, but is three visits enough to assess competence? If we make a comparison apprentices who work with firms might spend 4 years at level 2 and 3; so does 3 assessments equate to this...I don't think it does.
Hence apprentices who are with firms time-serving are being disenfranchised. As for the college system, its become a believable myth...you sound as though you believe this system to be fair, however your final statement quoted above infers that colleges will be able to supply labour without the need for employers.
I believe that FE colleges and staff work hard and have integrity, so this is not a dig at assessors or teachers - its just perhaps a point to reflect on.
The system of training, that is devoid of work place culture, important work process knowledge and reliant on institutional 'representational' knowledge (taught to test) is hardly an 'objective' measure of someone's capacity or competence. In addition you talk of 'underpinning knowledge' - I can't see how this can possibly be achieved without access to real work experience and onsite-mediation of learning - how can a novice possibly have underpinning knowledge of something they have not yet experienced in the real world? Do they remember everything they learned about this underpinning knowledge, and is the underpinning knowledge directly related to what they do at work and can it really be 'applied'. So your assertion that 'underpinning knowledge' can be easily plucked out of the memory, to be applied in a situation sometime in the future is a difficult one for me to believe. Many plumbers I have employed can't remember what they did at college the previous day!
A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and what seems to be missing is the ability of those operatives trained to 'competent' standards to understand their own incompetence. Furthermore, I would argue these semi-trained operatives think they are competent, because they have been deemed as so, through a highly questionable process - formal qualifications, which are often outcome driven and taught to test (so college institutions can draw the their funding, and assessors and teachers can get their wages while the goverment are happy that national qualification targets are being met). But is this really a system for high quality 21st century skills that the government and sector skills councils keep harping about.
How would our 'competent' college trained graduates (without employers) stand up on the job for real, when compared with say a German installer that has met their competency levels required set up in business - this requires 5 years minimum work experience and equivalent qualifiction of master (level 4).
However, from your quote above, the most disturbing aspect is that the process of college and qualification legitimates or gives weight to the fact that new installers can now stand side by side with established firms and charge the same rates; sometimes only after a few months of training.
My question to you Phil, how do you see this going and do you think demand for plumbing courses will diminish or will they get more popular? Has the new QCF framework improved the situation, and made it more rigorous, or do you see gaps in this that undermine the notion and meaning of competence further?
