New qualifications for food and drink workers

Following a pilot scheme led by Improve, the sector skills council, the first of the new-style qualifications is to be rolled out in the New Year. And now, employers are being urged by Improve to join sector steering groups to identify needs for many more new occupational qualifications. Eventually they will be developed for all levels of the workforce, including management. “In the 20 years since NVQs were introduced they have been the only publicly accredited occupational qualifications most people could aspire to,” explained Jack Matthews (pictured), chief executive of Improve. “But in many industries, including food and drink manufacturing, some employers have found that the framework for NVQs has been too rigid and not relevant enough to the needs of their workforce. “Many workers have valuable competencies that they should be able to have recognised through a publicly accredited qualification, but when you consider for instance that in food and drink manufacturing a Level-2 NVQ, the most-popular benchmark, is equivalent to five good-grade GCSEs, then for a lot of workers this may not be considered achievable. Now at last the shackles are off, and we have the opportunity to introduce, in addition to NVQs, a whole raft of new qualifications, which can be designed around competency skills for real jobs, be more accessible and more achievable. They will allow people to complete, perhaps a basic level of qualification at first, and then develop gradually, adding higher levels of competency and recognition by completing increasing numbers of bite-sized chunks of learning that build towards better qualifications.” Further information at www.improveltd.co.uk.