Qualifications are a mess
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24 / 03 / 2009 | Author: dnorris
Qualifications are a mess.
If you line up all the qualifications that the average teacher holds after ten years of teaching they will probably cover a whole desk.
This is not because they are hyper qualified. It is because every piece of training now carries a qualification. You get one for first aid even though you have to hold a first aid certificate if you are taking children on trips; you get one for learning how to use the interactive whiteboard now that all the whiteboards have been replaced with them. You get a certificate for updating your IT skills, and another one for learning how to do a power point presentation, and I even got one for learning how the new telephones worked when they were joined to a borough wide system that linked all the schools and colleges.
That is at a local level.
Nationally there has been a proliferation of bodies issuing qualifications. This means that a candidate arriving for an interview can take from their briefcase a portfolio bristling with qualifications that the average school governor will not even have heard of.
The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority issue them; National Skills Academies issue them. Further Education Institutes issue them and Teacher Training Institutes issue them. I got two certificates for learning to teach English as a second language. I got one from Trinity House – the national body and one from Hallam University where I had studied.
In amongst the forest of organisations some familiar ones have survived. The Open College Network hosted many unfamiliar bodies, but its original aspirations were high. So were those of the Workers Education Association. None ranked as high as the City & Guilds Organisation. They have a history of providing high quality, high standard, difficult and well respected courses. At the other end of the spectrum comes Edexcel. They gained notoriety for becoming embroiled in SATs exams.
Not for the first time, the call has come to simplify the whole provision of examinations.
So far the remit is simply 14 – 19 qualifications.
The Government has flagged up an intention to stop funding qualifications that fall outside 4 basic categories, namely A levels and GCSE’s: diplomas: apprenticeships: and the foundation learning tiers.
So far 4 Diplomas have been prepared with a further 13 B Tec style Diplomas to follow.
The Government is working on a policy of simply wiping out the rival qualifications. Some have already fallen by the wayside because funding has been withdrawn from colleges wishing to use them. But so far there has been a lot of resistance from students. They still want to take the old qualifications.
