10 December 2003

Good morning to you all. It is a great pleasure to be part of the ETB's conference on such an important subject.

Continuing professional development (CPD) is needed at all levels in science, engineering and technology and other sectors, not least because of the need to raise productivity, improve quality, and to innovate.

CPD refers not only to maintaining and updating skills and knowledge but also to progression from one level to another and to the accumulation of skills across as well as between occupational levels.

There need be no rigid, impervious boundaries.

Today's talent for tomorrow's business is to be found among the next generation of young people in schools and colleges, and in the existing workforce who will still account for a large proportion of the workforce in ten years time and beyond.

For all of them, we need a unified qualifications and credit framework spanning 14 year olds to ninety year olds - I did say ninety and not nineteen.

A responsive, flexible and coherent framework that makes sense to learners and employers, in which vertical and horizontal progression are as smooth as they can be.

From this perspective, that we are in the position that the railways were once, when they were bedevilled by different track gauges. We need to work together to create a single gauge for qualifications so that there is no inconvenience to learners when crossing boundaries between, for example, work and higher education. A single gauge which, nevertheless, respects existing arrangements for quality assurance.

Those of us responsible for the infrastructures of learning and qualifications need to exercise a common will in the interests of the learner and the employer. We cannot afford to be parochial or partisan, we have to work together.

With the Skills Strategy, we have reached a critical juncture in vocational education and training, and we all have a responsibility and an opportunity to work together to ensure that we have training and qualifications that are more coherent, responsive, relevant and flexible than they have ever been before.

What is QCA doing?

For our part, we are changing radically our mindset and our practices so that we can deliver demand-led vocational education and training.

That mindset goes beyond simply understanding demand and responding to it.

The qualifications market has been product driven for far too long, and we need to think bigger and further by not just understanding and responding to demand but by driving it. And that means anticipating what learners and employers would want if it were available.

We are working closely with the emerging Sector Skills Councils, the Sector Skills Development Agency, the Learning and Skills Council (and councils across the country), other regulatory authorities and many other bodies including the University Vocational Awards Council, the Federation of Awarding Bodies and, of course, the Engineering and Technology Board to ensure that we can anticipate what employers and learners will want.

We are seeking out what employers and learners need. Many organisations here today were represented on the steering group of our recent needs analysis of the engineering qualifications in the National Qualifications Framework. Over 600 people from large and small employers, further education, schools and private training providers and learners contributed to the project.

We are streamlining our accreditation system to ensure that qualifications, and the qualifications framework, are kept up to date and that there are no unnecessary obstacles in the way of the awarding bodies responding to the needs of their customers, the learners and the employers.

We see ourselves not so much as a gatekeeper but as an enabler of high quality training leading to relevant qualifications.

As I said, today's talent for tomorrow's business is in schools and colleges and in the workplace. QCA recognises how important the next generation is, and we have made and we will be making further changes to qualifications and assessment to make science, engineering and technological qualifications more attractive to young people.

The new GCSE in Engineering (Double Award) has been very well received by employers who have told us in our surveys that it is critical, essential and of strategic importance to the sector. Teachers and lecturers have told us that it is rigorous, demanding and challenging.

Credit Framework

But central to meeting the needs for continuing professional development, especially the needs of those who are working with small and medium sized employers, is the proposed credit framework which we are currently working on.

We have been asked by Ivan Lewis to advise him on assigning credit to all units in the National Qualifications Framework by March next year; the deadline for implementation of credit rated units for qualifications in most occupational sectors is 2007-10.

In my view, this is absolutely critical to the success of the Skills Strategy.

One of our biggest challenges is to ensure that we resolve the tension between flexibility on the one hand and the need for coherence on the other. It would be self-defeating if we had a flexible and responsive qualifications framework that was so complicated that neither learners, employers nor funders could understand it.

You will recall that a major part of the rationale for establishing a National Qualifications Framework was to bring order to the jungle of qualifications that had become so overgrown over the years that it was difficult to find a way through it.

Another major challenge is to ensure that the awarding bodies give full recognition to units and credit awarded by other awarding bodies.

In the credit framework that we are developing, all qualifications will be unitised and assigned credit values.

It will be absolutely clear to an employer and a learner what a level means and what the amount of credit given means. The packet of learning and its contents will be clearly labelled using straightforward nationally agreed criteria.

To ensure that learners can transfer credit between different bodies, the regulatory authorities will work with partners (including awarding bodies, Sector Skills Councils, higher education and the European Union) to agree mutual recognition systems. We will develop rules for approving packages of units as qualifications, to ensure all qualifications have a rationale and can demonstrate progression opportunities.

Learners will be able to undertake bite-size chunks of learning, and it will be possible to progress at their own pace towards achieving a full qualification or, if they wish, to stop short of a full qualification. This will allow learners to accumulate recognised units across levels as well as to progress up the levels in the framework.

Learners will gain credit for achievement within an agreed credit accumulation and transfer system. Providers and employers will be able to combine units from different qualifications and qualification types to meet individual learners' skills needs.

You will be able to mix, for example, the GCE Maths, National Vocational Qualification competence and Higher National Certificate knowledge and understanding.

Employers in the engineering, science and technology sector tell us that they want their new entrants to have general 'employability skills' - for example, manipulation of mathematic and scientific principles, working in a team, dealing with customers - combined with specific competences determined by their own competitive environment.

A credit framework will allow them to achieve this.

Principles for unitisation and credit have already been agreed within the credit and qualifications frameworks for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Work is in hand in England. Partners will align the unitisation and credit principles across all four countries to ensure consistency across the UK.

QCA will work in partnership with the sector skills councils, funding agencies, awarding bodies and other key partners to establish qualification strategies for each sector.

These strategies will build upon the needs analysis research, and will link into Sector Skills Agreements. The strategies will be developed in accordance with guidance produced by the regulatory authorities and will lead to the development of sector specific qualification frameworks.

QCA has in the past played a somewhat passive role in the development of qualifications. This will not be the case in the future. We will not be a repository for whatever qualifications one awarding body or another dreams up to meet an identified need.

We will be insisting on market data to back up claims of needs; we will where necessary encourage awarding bodies to work together in order to reduce duplication and overlap; and we may decide to take ownership of qualifications ourselves and licence them to awarding bodies as appropriate.

It is a daunting challenge for us to meet market needs and at the same time achieve a coherent national occupational qualifications framework. We may have to tread on a few toes along the way but the pain will be insignificant when set against the gains to be made.

How, for example, can we expect to attract young people into vocational learning in the 14-19 phase if we cannot produce a qualifications structure that they can easily understand?

Our aim must surely be to reduce the core qualification structures to one if possible, or at least a very small number, at each level for each occupation.

QCA will ensure that openQuals, the qualification database for the National Qualifications Framework, includes information on these frameworks and enables users to find out what qualifications employers require for entry and progression within particular sectors.

The result? A flexible framework for the sector, built of units of achievement that employers and learners will be able to exploit to meet individual and organisational objectives.

It will be easier for employers to set continuing and professional development targets for their employees. Perhaps even government targets in the future could be couched as: "20% of adults gaining a minimum of X new credits per year."

It will enable employers to select those aspects of qualifications that address the skills shortages in their particular location or sub sector.

Indeed, employers tell us that they would like to combine, for example, aspects of mathematical principles contained in the GCE, with units of competence in engineering NVQs, and underpinning knowledge and understanding from HNCs. Each of these components should be recognised and credited to the learner and access to funding must follow this model.

The credit framework is likely to benefit, in particular, employees in small and medium sized business, particularly micro-businesses. It is here that the barriers to continuing professional development are likely to loom largest: lack of finance for large chunks of learning and continuing professional development away from the work place for long periods.

The Engineering and Technology Board's own research found that fewer than one in five small companies had formal continuing professional development programmes, and that CDP needed to be tailored to the needs of small businesses with relatively flat structures and limited opportunities for formal career advancement and job changes.

National Occupational Standards

The National Occupational Standards developed by the emerging Sector Skills Councils, which have to be approved by QCA and the other regulatory bodies, have a key role to play in ensuring coherence in the new credit framework and in increasing the uptake of continuing professional development leading to formal recognition in the National Qualifications Framework.

Employers are at the heart of the standards programme in the science, engineering and technology sectors, and standards must be designed to meet skills requirements not only today but also in the future.

The standards are not in themselves qualifications, but they provide a vital foundation for them, and for training and professional development, and they must be kept up-to-date and internationally benchmarked.

Together with the Sector Skills Development Agency we will take a strategic look at occupational standards to ensure that we all agree what role they should play, what their relationship should be with qualifications in the framework, and indeed, how their development should be funded.

We have a responsibility and a pivotal role here in promoting coherence to meet the challenge I referred to earlier: how to have a flexible and responsive qualifications structure without descending into chaos and confusion which learners and employers will not thank us for.

A lot of learning, both informally as part of work and more formally through courses, does not necessarily lead to nationally recognised 'qualifications'.

The QCA, ACCAC and CCEA review of engineering qualifications underlined this point. Business drives the need for training and qualifications for employers, and that most of the demand arises from the need to multi-skill or up-skill staff on new equipment and new technology.

Most of employer needs are met by vendor or company devised training, which does not necessarily lead to formal qualifications, and they are satisfied with internal certificates that are not externally validation.

But employers do change their policies and some, which have not used formal qualifications to up-skill their employees, are starting to do so.

e-Assessment and e-Learning

There is another innovation which is likely to add substantially to advancing continuing professional development and its formal recognition in qualifications or parts of qualifications. And that is e-Assessment and e-Learning, which I see is the subject of the next presentation from Dr Malcolm Read and I look forward to hearing what he will have to say.

All that I will say here is that we are committed to the use of e-Assessment and e-Learning where appropriate. e-Assessment will drive uptake of all vocational qualifications by making assessment much more flexible and accessible. It will pose some challenges for Awarding Bodies but I suspect that all but a few progress-averse awarding bodies will see the need to embrace technology and the benefits of doing so fairly quickly.

What about the qualifications?

We know from the 'needs analysis' of engineering qualifications in the National Qualifications Framework that 51% of employers and training providers in the telephone survey felt that the existing qualifications meet the needs of learners fully and a further 43% felt that they meet needs partially. The main reason given for qualifications not being suitable were content not being relevant to the needs of industry (43%).

The main reasons given by those who feel that qualifications only partially meet the needs of learners are that qualifications are too academic and need updating, and the need for more practical experience.

While only 10% feel that provision needs a complete review, 68% want specific areas to be reviewed.

Whilst this is undoubtedly a much better picture than we see in some other sectors, we are determined to achieve 100% satisfaction with qualifications in the science, engineering and technology sector.

And let me signal clearly to you that we are open to developing new nationally-owned qualifications that are relevant and meet needs even if they are not NVQs.

What is important is that any qualification or certificate that bears an Awarding Body logo alongside our own QCA logo, or when a course is advertised as leading to such a certificate, should signify three things:

• That the quality of the training input will be high.
• That the content of the programme will be relevant to the occupational area.
• That the resulting certificate will have genuine currency for employability and progression.

Partnership

In conclusion ladies and gentlemen, let me underline the need for us all to work in partnership to give every encouragement to everyone, whatever their occupational status and whatever level they have so far attained, to continue to learn and to aspire to the very best. To give every encouragement to employers whether they are small, medium or large scale companies, to support learners in continuing to develop professionally.

QCA is but one player, and I am determined to ensure that it plays its part fully and effectively, in a massive undertaking. And partnership is crucial to its success. I welcome the work that the Engineering and Technology Board is doing to promote science, engineering and technology and its attempts in the sector to stimulate continuing professional development.

I also welcome the work that the ETB is doing to change the perception of engineering through its Engineering the Olympics programme. In my own country, leading Australian engineers helped make the Sydney Olympics such a success in 2000. The young engineers that the ETB are nurturing and who are gaining qualifications now, may yet make a London Olympic Games into something we can all be proud of in 2012.

Ken Boston