.prescribing
the training employers want
SKILLdoctors Position Paper 1:
14 – 19 Vocational Education
A MODIFIED SKILLS PASSPORT APPROACH
CONTENTS
(Based on response to call for evidence from Prof Alison Wolf in 2010. Last updated 29 Sep 2015)
1) Introduction
2) Observed issues addressed by the Skills Passport approach
3) Transferring the centre of provision
4) Regulatory and funding body
5) Role of educational establishments
6) Cost savings
7) Further advantages
8) Author biog
9) Further information contact details
1) Introduction
1.1. The approach proposed
here will apply to 16 – 19 year olds who, during their 14 – 15 year education, choose
and prepare for a purely vocational pathway. It derives from observations of
vocational training for 19+ adults and attempts to address some of the observed
issues likely to be common to the 14 – 19 age group.
1.2. This paper presents
initial ideas which require further development.
1.3. It builds on the idea of the Skills Passport, but changes the emphasis of the way in which they are used.
1.4. The approach need not be limited to measuring vocational skills (see final point under 2.1 below and first point under 7.1).
2) Observed issues addressed by the Skills Passport approach
2.1. Some of the observed
issues (examples available) which the Skills Passport approach attempts to
address include:
· insufficient
overlap between taught skills and required skills;
· much vocational
training is too academic and does not suit a large cohort of individuals
(including NEETs) – too much theory, not enough practical;
· conversely, much current vocational training includes a large element of teaching learners how to suck eggs;
· assessment of
skills is over-analytical and requires irrelevant skills to enable individuals
to demonstrate relevant skills;
· assessment is cumbersome,
bureaucratic, expensive and over-proscriptive;
· much vocational
education stifles natural talent and can undermine skills by making some
individuals self-conscious;
· balance is skewed
too much towards school and college based learning vs. workplace learning;
· for adults,
workplace training has been shown to have a greater effect on earning power
than gaining a qualification (Wolf et al, Journal of Education Policy Vol. 21,
No. 5, September 2006, pp. 535–565);
· terms
such as 'two tier system' perpetuate the elitist core belief (of
all sides) that academic education is somehow better than skills based
learning and such terms act as a barrier to developing equally valued
parallel tracks.
· If
a skills passport system were adapted and adopted to include and
measure both *vocational and applicable academic skills (*including soft skills), replacing separate
systems, it could finally help to break down the divides.
3) Transferring the centre of provision
3.1. It is suggested that for
16-19 year olds, the main providers of vocational education will be employers
rather than educational establishments. Educational establishments will provide
gap filling interventions when employers need specified assistance.
3.2. Employees will have Skills
Passports, listing the skill sets pertinent to their job. The skills set will
be selected by the employer, together with the employee, from skills menus.
3.3. Obtaining a Skills
Passport and associated lifelong Skills Passport number (= unique learner
number) will require online registration.
3.4. The employer will train
the employee on the job and, as the employee is trained against each skill on
the passport, the employer will award the employee a score according to level of
competence, marking this on the passport (hard copy will be a simplified print
out of online ‘master’ copy). Employees who do not require additional training in a
particular skill because they have already attained the required level will equally have that skill scored and dated on their
passport.
3.5. Under this approach, all
employers will be expected to register (online) to provide training. Those who
do not register will be able to provide training, but will be unable to award Skills
Passport scores, thus employees are likely to favour employment with registered
employers.
3.6. A self-regulatory system,
involving (employer) peer assessment, will ensure that standards are maintained.
This will be both formal and informal. There will be little or no assessment by
independent external bodies (though see also section 4 below).
3.7. The informal regulation
will occur as certain employers gain either a good or less good reputation for
their training and Skills Passport marking, much in the same way as educational
establishments gain informal reputations.
3.8. The formal assessment will
take place when employees move jobs. New employers will be encouraged to assess
passport scores and register their assessment of those scores via an online system
as well as submitting reviews. In this way employers will build up an
assessment score and a review profile. Mechanisms will be needed to ensure that
the system works for all sizes of employer.
3.9. There will also be an
employee assessment and review system.
3.10. Employees will build up
skills scores. These will measure real skills, learned on the job and valued by
employers. Different skills will carry different ratings according to their
complexity. As well being entered initially onto paper Skills Passports (print
outs of the online master copy), skills scores will be entered by employers onto
the online master Skills Passport to ensure that the online master copy is kept
up to date. The online Skills Passport will electronically sort skills
according to category, rating and score. An online analysis will award Levels
or Grades of achievement both in terms of overall rating/score and classified
according to job type and calculated according to score and balance of basic
vs. complex skills.
3.11. Many skills will be
relevant to more than one job type and the online analysis will enable an
employee to see what rating/score level they are achieving in other job areas,
thus allowing measurement of transferable skills.
3.12. When an individual
changes job, a new skills menu will be entered in the Skills Passport, listing
any new skills required for the new job and cross referencing with relevant
existing skills. (Cross referencing will be automatic in the online Skills
Passport.)
3.13. An employee will be
able to request that a score on their Skills Passport is updated if there is
good reason to consider it out of date or good reason to judge that the score has been
improved upon.
3.14. Scoring will not be
overly proscriptive or be constricted by rigid, detailed marking schemes. Employers will
be allowed flexibility and judgement to mark within bands such as: competent,
1-3; good, 4-6; excellent, 7-9. Normalisation and consistency will be achieved
via the self-regulation and peer review mechanisms.
3.15. When scoring against a
particular skill on the Skills Passport, limited extra information will be
provided e.g. if the skill is use of a particular category of till (cash register), detail of
the type(s) of till will be entered. There will be further, but still limited,
information on the online Skills Passport compared with the paper print out.
4) Regulatory and funding body
4.1. An independent body will
be needed, but its size and cost will be minimal compared with current
regulatory, funding and local authority bodies, not least because the main
regulatory role will be carried out by employers. The roles of the regulatory
body (the local representatives of which may be hosted by local authorities) will
include:
· in liaison with
educational establishments, assisting employers in defining and grading skills,
drawing up skills menus and defining core job related skills sets;
· maintaining the
online system;
· monitoring the
online peer and employee assessment and review systems;
· arbitration in
regulatory disputes;
· managing the
funding.
4.2. The size and cost of
the organisation will also be less than that of current bodies because funding criteria
will be simpler, requiring the transfer of funds for increases in Skills Passport
score (entered online) to the relevant training provider, usually an employer (but
sometimes an educational establishment when gap filling).
5) Role of educational establishments
This
will change radically
under the Skills Passport approach. Educational Establishments will no
longer
be the main providers of vocational training for 16 – 19 year olds. Nor
will
the vast majority of training occur in educational buildings. Moreover,
there will
not be curricula devised by educational establishments. Employers, in
liaison
with educational establishments will define the sets of skills required
for the
jobs they host. It is also essential that the Skills Passport approach
does not merely become an exercise in transferring the academic
approach from traditional learning environments to the workplace, as
appears to be the case with some apprenticeships and, for example, the
SCITT programme.
Educational establishments will,
amongst other roles:
· prepare 14 – 15
year olds for the Skills Passport approach;
· provide ‘flying
trainers’ (‘Skill Doctors’) to fill training gaps for individuals or groups at
the request of employers and to their case by case specifications. These
interventions will be delivered in the workplace to teach skills specific to
the job;
· in liaison with the
regulatory body, assist employers in defining and grading skills, drawing up
skills menus and defining core job related skills sets;
· provide
in parallel (essential) non-vocational learning, though perhaps this is
a false dichotomy - there is a huge and growing body of evidence that,
so-called, non-vocational learning is vital for a rounded and
healthy population and therefore for a rounded and healthy workforce.
6) Cost savings
6.1. In addition to the
savings described under 4 above, it is also envisaged that there will be
substantial savings from reducing the role of educational establishments as only
a proportion of these savings will be required to fund training by employers.
6.2. It is proposed that
each learner will have a notional annual budget (considerably less than current
cost per learner), which will mainly be used to fund employers for each Skills
Passport point gained by the learner during their employment / training with
that employer during the course of the budget year.
7) Further advantages
7.1. Other advantages of the
approach include:
· the
Skills Passport
will accompany an individual beyond 19 and throughout their career,
having the
potential, as points are accumulated, to surpass academic
qualifications as a
tool for employers as well as for employees moving job - even those
pursuing an academic route will need to be assessed against Skills
Passport measures and
it is acknowledged that such a system might be unpopular with some who
have achieved their position by choosing a, perhaps largely
irrelevant, academic approach without formal assessment of relevant and/or
transferrable skills);
· as an individual
collects more skills/points, he/she will be able to check scores in other job
areas (quantifiable measure of transferrable skills) and fill gaps (e.g. by
seeking other roles in his/her organisation where missing skills/points can be
accumulated) to facilitate desired career changes;
· scoring will
recognise ‘natural talent’ as well as taught skills and behaviours;
· employers assess
relevant skills rather than requiring individuals to acquire irrelevant skills
(analytical skills, advanced writing skills etc) to demonstrate their relevant skills.
8) Author biog
The
author has eight years experience running a programme which helped
adults with
mental health problems to access education as part of their recovery
process.
He also spent eight years teaching A-level science to students who had
not
achieved their required grades in a school setting and is author of a
five star
rated online science text. After a period as an interim manager,
working with clients such as NIACE (an adult learning consortium) and
the NHS, he has currently returned to teaching.
9) FURTHER INFORMATION:
Email: info at skilldoctors dot org dot uk
Web: http://www.skilldoctors.org.uk
Skills Passport: Europass