The View from Paul Steeples, new Head of Vocational Qualifications at BIS

I started in BIS Skills Directorate in July, after many years working on regional economic development, and I thought you might find it useful to have the impressions of an outsider to the vocational qualifications scene. Although I was involved to some extent in Regional Development Agencies’ work on regional skills strategies in that job, and have previous experience in dealing with the HE sector, vocational qualifications were pretty much a closed book to me. So here goes…

My first observation probably won’t surprise you – it’s a complicated world, with lots of organisations, and lots of acronyms. I think I more or less discovered a new organisation I wasn’t aware of in every meeting during my first month, and getting my mind round how they all fit together was a challenge. It’s possible to overstate the extent to which learners and employers need to understand how the whole system works (a colleague from Northern Ireland memorably said that this was like needing to know how the internal combustion engine works in order to drive a car), but I do have the nagging feeling that things aren’t as clear and transparent to users as they probably should be. I hope to work with you all on this as the months go by.

My second may be counter-intuitive. When I arrived, it was clear that we were moving into a new phase on vocational qualifications. The Qualifications and Credit Framework (QCF) is in place and populated, and the job of my team is moving from managing a complex project to looking at how well the result is working. Yet, from everyone I talk to, I get the feeling that there’s unfinished business. I don’t think anyone is saying “rip it up and start again”, but nor is there the sense of reaching a promised land where there is an effective, clear system functioning as well as it possibly can be. Once again, I hope to work closely with stakeholders to see whether anything needs to change or develop, and if so, what.

Finally, I’ve been impressed with the enthusiasm of everyone I’ve met so far, and their genuine passion for using the qualification system to bring benefits for learners and employers. And I’ve also discovered that I’ve got a hidden talent – a teaching session during a visit to Sheffield College demonstrated that in spite of having absolutely no experience, I can make beautiful marzipan roses, given the right materials and instruction (see the photo with this article). I hope that provides an apt metaphor for our work together over the coming months and years.
 

BIS News

Publications

A research paper on the Returns to Intermediate and Low level Vocational Qualifications was published on 9 September. This provides further analysis of economic benefits from vocational qualifications and brings previous estimates up-to-date.

The Post-16 Further Education and Skills Statistical First Release was published on 27 October.

Wolf Review of Vocational Education

We are working with the Department of Education (DfE) to implement the recommendations in the Wolf Review of 14-19 Vocational Education. Recent developments include:

• An announcement by DfE on 27 October that only high quality, rigorous vocational qualifications will count in performance tables
• On 6 October, DfE issued a consultation paper on Government proposals on study programmes for 16-19 year olds.

A joint BIS/DfE consultation on recommendations 24 and 27 of the Wolf Review, on the future and role of National Occupational Standards and how in future employers should be involved in the design of qualifications, is likely to take place in the New Year.

Employer support offer

Employers wishing to have their own training accredited on the QCF, or interested in becoming an awarding organisation should visit Business Link for information and to view interactive tools on the processes involved.

WorldSkills London 2011 – Team UK excels at WorldSkills

WorldSkills the world’s largest international skills competition took place 5-8 October.

Team UK earned 13 medals in total, exceeding their target of ten, and won an additional 12 Medallions for Excellence, where competitors met the world-class standard of competency.

Our five gold medals came in the cooking, bricklaying, stonemasonry, visual merchandising, and plumbing and heating categories. Two silver medals were awarded in autobody repair and landscape gardening. The team’s six bronze medals included joinery, welding, car painting and mechanical engineering.

The medals tally builds on the achievements of the last WorldSkills competition, Calgary 2009, where Team UK brought home three gold and six bronze medals.

Organisers described the event as the largest ever international skills competition, with young people from 51 countries and regions competing and more than 200,000 visitors over the four competition days.

Ben Murphy, 20, from London, wins gold in cooking

Kirsty Hoadley, 20, from Slough was a gold medallist in visual merchandising

 

Skills Funding Agency Update

Measuring Success and the QCF

Since December 2010 the Skills Funding Agency has been undertaking modelling around how provider performance and success measures might be articulated in the context of both the award of qualifications and the award of credit related to units.

Although unit delivery currently lies outside success measures, the growing demand for units (and credit) through the expansion of the unit delivery trials into 2011/12 and the unit offer for those individuals who are on state benefits and seeking employment means that it is important to begin to think about the implications of success measures that may, in due course, be able to take account of a wider range of qualification attributes - namely units and credit.

Unit Delivery Trials 2011/12

During 2011/12 the Agency will continue modelling work around units and qualifications available on the QCF in order to better understand what implications there may be in terms of measuring success at unit level across the sector.  

The Skills Funding Agency is taking forward a new round of unit delivery trials in 2011/12. A total of 16,000 units are available on the QCF for use in these trials. These trials, which will be completed by 31 July 2012, are distinct from the unit delivery offer to the unemployed. Their aims are to:

• help providers support hard-to-reach adults to enter further education
• ensure robust IAG for learners undertaking flexible delivery
• promote use of the Personal Learning Record among providers
• support demand for credit accumulation and transfer
• model the impact of unit delivery on a large scale 
• examine how unit delivery can promote employer investment

The Agency will support participating providers with advice and guidance, assist in dialogue with Awarding Organisations and ensure outcomes from the trials inform the continued reform of the FE sector.  The Agency has commissioned an external evaluation of the 2011/12 trials to be carried out by NIACE.

The evaluation report for the trials undertaken in 2010/11 is now available. 

Personal Learning Record (PLR)

The PLR offers a simple facility to record and view learner achievement - including QCF, FE, A-Level and GCSE qualifications. The PLR is an accessible verified record of learning participation and achievement which will help learners to take control of their personal learning development as they move on from one course of training to another, throughout their lives.

The PLR is a free service that helps providers and advisers support learners to access and interpret their achievement data via the PLR, on-line and in one place. It is a valuable tool for colleges and providers as it supports the collection of a copy of the QCF unit and qualification achievement data direct from awarding organisations.

Colleges and Providers have an important and influential role in ensuring that the PLR is used by learners to help drive forward the achievement of credit and qualifications within a framework of lifelong-learning.

To sign up to the PLR contact the LRS Customer Helpdesk on 0845 602 2589 or by emailing lrssupport@learningrecordsservice.org.uk.

See the QCF Interactive Guide for more information and details on the PLR.

Association of Employment and Learning Providers Update

The evaluation of the Unit Delivery Trails which 12 AELP members took part in between May and July of this year has been completed.  The Evaluation Report is now available on the AELP website together with a new Guide to Funding Unit Delivery.

The guide is designed to support providers in the utilisation of funding and the management of employer investment for the delivery of QCF units. It includes case studies featuring 6 of the providers who took part in the trials.

Report for Northern Ireland

This final edition of the BIS VQ newsletter presents an opportunity to set out briefly what has been achieved in Northern Ireland since the VQ reform programme opened its implementation phase back in 2008 and, more importantly, to look forward at further plans and challenges in the VQ area now that it is almost a year since the programme closed. 

Firstly, the programme delivered a communications strategy which ensured that support and advice on using QCF qualifications was given where it was needed, made resources available through a dedicated website, and monitored progress through the use of surveys.  Further education colleges, training providers, NI sector skills councils and awarding bodies are all now using and developing QCF qualifications in line with the original policy aims.  Furthermore, programmes funded by the Department for Employment and Learning, including Steps to Work, Training for Success, further education colleges and ApprenticeshipsNI all now take advantage of the flexibilities offered by the QCF in the way that those programmes are delivered.

The Recognition of Training in Employment Programme has also really taken off, with a number of companies receiving advice and support from the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment’s accreditation team to have their in-house training recognised or to use national occupational standards to underpin their training systems.

The closure process for the Northern Ireland Reform Programme recognised the transformation that had been brought about by the implementation of the reforms and identified a number of areas where further work will be required to deliver the full benefits of the programme.  These areas have largely been taken up and are being driven by the new Skills Strategy for Northern Ireland: ‘Success through Skills – Transforming Futures’.  Projects within the strategy include a drive to coordinate better the support and advice provided to Northern Ireland employers on the use of qualifications, and a funding priorities project which will examine a range of evidence on what qualifications are being funded now, and make recommendations on how that funding can be better aligned to meet the needs of Northern Ireland’s employers and learners.

Finally, the Department for Employment and Learning is continuing to coordinate the implementation of services provided by the Learner Records Service to underpin better and more consistent collection of achievement data across the Northern Ireland education system.

Report from Wales

On 29 September the Deputy Minister for Skills announced further details of the review of qualifications for 14-19 year olds in Wales.

The review will deliver a final report in late 2012.