Using NVQs to promote Learning LO10295

Dr Ilfryn Price (101701.3454@compuserve.com)
Tue, 1 Oct 1996 11:18:26 -0400

With apologies to readers outside the UK I would like to make contact with
any one else who agrees with Arthur Battram's recent description of NVQs,
reproduced below for those who missed it. My partner started using them
that way [with the women returners Arthur uses as an example] some years
ago. A discovery for me in the last nine months has been how the NVQ
system could, [once the *FLIP* was made, really add value to both
individual and organisational learning. It would be interesting to make
contact with others who see it that way.

If Price
Active Personal Learning
Pewley Fort Guildford UK
101701.3454@compuserve.com

=========from Arthur========

In the UK the government has been developing National Vocational
Qualifications since the early 80s. These are Vocational Qualifications
based on 'outcome [not the same as output] statements'. called standards
of competence [not the same as Hay/McBer competencies, which are more like
personal qualities [ish]. for example from the Management Standards:

element 9.1 ' run meetings to exchange info and make decisions'

So a 'standard of competence' doesn't specify input like an academic
curriculum , or output like an industrial quality process, instead it says
- -do it how you like so long as you actually do ' exchange info and make
decisions'. Of course there's more to it -range statements and
performance criteria, but you get the drift, hopefully. so if I can run
meetings by standing on the table, humming the national anthem, or by
using silence or Michael's gong - cool, so long as I deliver to the
standards spelt out in element 9.1.

Now when I understood standards which isn't easy-you have to do a mental
flip, [which is especially hard for trainers and HR people, incidentally,
the 'troops' usually 'grok' it straight away] I felt liberated: if you can
SHOW using evidence[ for which there are also rules], then you could gain
a qualifications regardless of academic so called 'knowledge'. This opens
up access to women returners and other groups previously excluded from
education because of circumstance, prejudice etcetera. There is no
curriculum, so a parent can use their household management skills as
evidence of management skills, for example. Then the colleges and
professions got hold of it and as the police here say 'it all went
pear-shaped guv', but that's another story. 

-- 


Dr Ilfryn Price <101701.3454@compuserve.com>
 


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