Using NVQs to promote Learning LO10305

arthur battram (apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk)
Tue, 1 Oct 1996 20:34:54 +0100

Replying to LO10295 --

If Price said in a recent post:

>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...

So would I myself!

APB note - this isn't a UK only thing, If:
the equivalent of 'standards of competence' and NVQs are in use in
Australia, and NZ, I think, and I hear that Mexico and the exsoviet
states, lithuania, estonia, czech republic etcetera etc are considering
them. The standards of competence approach in companies is in use in
several organisations including 'blue chips' in UK.}

I'd just point out that the benefits are much greater for organisations if
they don't stick to NVQs slavishly, although this can potentially work
against access. It's a matter of focus of course- individual access for
learners .v. organisational learning benefits. There are important
differences and big links between the 'standards of competence in
organisations' approach and the full NVQ as qualification approach.

> 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.

2 more points:

1.The access agenda has faded somewhat, unfortunately, within the official
government funded NVQ promoters.

2.The FLIP is both fascinating and crucial. IMHO it is very misleading to
think of NVQs as qualifications at all, they are so different from input
driven academic qualifications. I like to rename them QACS when I'm
trying to sell the standards of competence approach : quality assured
competence statements, although QA is a bit of a limited and mechanistic
concept here. NVQs describe a general capability in a specific area, and
despite crude academic attacks asserting that they do, they do not go out
of date very easily. A small example: standards of competence for
communication will be framed in terms of result [outcome ] not method, so
they only need minor amending to cope with email as a method or even with
the forthcoming 2013 release of Microsoft MindReader 1.0 for Windows. The
issues of effective communication in a particular setting are not IMHO
that method-specific. Poor standards of competence [and there are some
around] will crudely specify things like 'photocopies are made and
distributed' rather than 'meeting time date and content are communiated to
potential attendees'.

If anyone wants to know more about all this, I did a book 'the ABC of
NVQs' in 94. It's been very popular. I could make text extracts
available on request.

[Host's Note: Mysterious Gremlins caused this msg to be distributed as
though it had come from If Price. It was posted by Arthur Battram. I have
corrected this here in this archive. ...Rick]

-- 

arthur battram <apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>