Making NVQs Easy.
Assessment interview in progress
1. NVQs (and their Scottish equivalent SVQs) have been supported by successive UK governments since 1986 as the preferred way of ensuring that the UK workforce has the skills available to carry out their jobs competently, efficiently and safely. Instead of being based on written exams NVQs and SVQs are based on assessing competence, which is done through observing people at work, asking questions and inspecting official documents.
Almost every occupation and industry is now ‘assessed’ through
NVQs, SVQs or some equivalent competence-based system, Examples are as wide
ranging as Nursing and healthcare, Hospitality, Construction, Utilities, Civil
Aviation, Engineering, Management, etc. Under the national governance of QCA
in England Wales and Northern Ireland and SQA in Scotland the arrangements
for all NVQs and SVQs are set by a small number of National Training Organisations,
NTOs as they are called; the certificates are issued by Awarding Bodies, and
the real work is done by Registered Centres who have trained Assessors and
Verifiers.
It should seem obvious that all you should have to do to get yourself an NVQ
is to show you are good at your job. However, as often happens, paperwork
has been invented, which, according to some people who should know better,
has been designed to make the task of assessing NVQs easier. Not so, I’m
afraid. Although paperwork has its place, many workers, even senior management,
find themselves too busy to grapple with new paperwork and “getting
their head round” the idea, so the job of completing an NVQ often gets
put on the back burner (“Until I’m a bit less busy”, as
many people can be heard to say).
This company, Chris McAllister Limited, has been pioneering an approach to
NVQs whereby we do as much of the paperwork for you as possible, or even dispense
with paperwork almost entirely. After all, we’re the experts. We have
been delivering NVQs for over fifteen years, providing certificates for thousands
of adults. Why should the adults who have to get their NVQ or SVQ themselves
be bothered with the small print? For the most part we help you gain your
NVQ by recording an interview with you and we take it from there. Yes, you
will have to write something, even if it is only to sign your name here and
there.
It is not so long ago since NVQ candidates, especially at the higher levels,
compiled a bulky collection of documents held together in a wide ring-binder
and called a portfolio. Everything between the covers of the ring-binder was
paper, until, that is, we got rid of much of the paper by using cassette recordings
of the interviews instead.
But even with audiocassettes, these traditional portfolios were bulky and heavy, and there was normally only one copy. Besides which, being heavy, they cost a fortune to send through the post. Surely there must be a better way?
So, to sum up then, we will help you achieve your NVQ mainly by interviewing you on the job. We will arrange to come and visit you (or your employees) You (or they) do not need to prepare anything in advance of our arrival. We will get you talking about your job and record the interview. Most of the rest, you can safely leave to us.
Chris McAllister Contact us
Now read on...... as they used to say at the beginning of magazine serial stories....
Electronic portfolios on CD-ROM
How we make electronic portfolios on CD-ROM