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1 7 6 T H E B U I L D I N G C O N S E R VAT I O N D I R E C T O R Y 2 0 1 6 T W E N T Y T H I R D E D I T I O N
USEFUL INFORMAT ION
6 VOCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS
An overview of credits and levels
DAVID BOULTING
THE IMPORTANCE of traditional building
skills has been a regular theme in these
pages since the directory was first
published 23 years ago. Promoting these skills
is essential to maintaining the traditionally
constructed buildings which make up around
20 per cent of the UK’s building stock.
CREDITS AND LEVELS
The landscape of vocational training in the
UK is complex. The table above shows the
levels of common qualifications in England,
Wales and Northern Ireland and illustrates
the approximate equivalence of vocational
qualifications to GCSEs, A Levels and higher
education qualifications. Scotland has a
slightly different system with 12 qualification
levels, from Access 1 to Doctorate at level
12 (see for an
explanatory table).
While vocational qualifications used to
be identified by the designation ‘NVQ’ (or
SVQ in Scotland), awarding organisations
are no longer required to use it and different
awarding organisations have different
conventions. For this reason, it is important
that prospective students – and arguably
specifiers – have a general understanding of
what the titles of vocational qualifications
mean in terms of both level of difficulty and
the duration of learning involved.
Most qualifications are composed of ‘units’
of learning, each with a value in ‘credits’. This
system allows more flexible learning because
students can build up the credits required to
achieve the qualification through a number of
routes and at their own pace. One credit usually
requires around 10 hours of learning.
In England, Wales and Northern Ireland
the levels are validated by the new Regulated
Qualifications Framework (RQF), which
replaced the Qualifications and Credit
Framework (QCF) at the end of 2015. At the
time of writing, however, most vocational
qualifications continue to reflect the QCF
requirements which they were designed to
meet. As well as the nine levels of attainment
shown in the table, QCF qualifications are
divided into three types according to duration:
• Award (1 to 12 credits)
• Certificate (13 to 36 credits)
• Diploma (37 credits or more).
As this suggests, an award is usually a short
introductory course that gives students a taste
of one or two initial units and takes place over
a period of days, while a diploma typically
takes 6–12 months. The title of a vocational
qualification, ‘L3 NVQ Diploma in Heritage
Skills’ for example, usually incorporates both
the level and the type (award/certificate/
diploma), so it gives an indication of both the
level of difficulty and the duration of learning.
The Scottish equivalent of the QCF and its
successor the RQF is the Scottish Credit and
Qualifications Framework (SCQF), which uses
the same credit-based system in which one
credit represents about 10 hours of learning.
If you want to check whether a vocational
qualification is officially recognised or what
level it is, there are searchable registers on the
websites of the main qualifications regulators
(the Scottish Qualifications Authority in
Scotland and Ofqual for the other home
nations).
TRAINING DELIVERY
Vocational training in traditional building
skills is largely delivered in the form of
traineeships (including various types of
apprenticeship), NVQs and their equivalents,
on-site training and upskilling programmes.
Typically, college or training centre learning
is combined with work placements or other
practical, on-site components. However,
skilled and experienced workers in the
construction sector who don’t have formal
qualifications can now gain them exclusively
on-site through the OSAT initiative (On-Site
Assessment and Training).
The heritage sector is poorly served
in terms of apprenticeships but there
are signs that this may be changing. The
government’s Trailblazer initiative allows
groups of employers to join together to
design apprenticeships that develop the
skills they need in their current and future
workforce. A heritage crafts trailblazer is
currently under development with input from
the Heritage Crafts Association, the Crafts
Council and others. As we were preparing to
go to print, the chancellor also announced
a new apprenticeship levy which will raise
£3 billion a year and fund three million new
apprenticeships.
FIND OUT MORE
Details of craft training and building
conservation courses can be found in the
course listings on pages 179–181 and regularly
updated listings appear on our website
BuildingConservation.com. The Further
Information section below includes other key
sources of information on craft training for
the heritage sector.
The website of the National Heritage
Training Group (see Further Information)
includes a very useful training course and
provider database which allows prospective
students to search for traditional building
skills courses throughout the UK by subject,
level and region.
Further Information
Construction Industry Training Board
Council on Training in Architectural
Conservation
Heritage Craft Alliance
National Heritage Training Group
Understanding Conservation
DAVID BOULTING PGCE PhD is the deputy
editor of The Building Conservation Directory
and joint editor of Historic Churches . He is a
former teacher and university lecturer.
LEVEL 8 Doctorate PhD, DPhil etc
NVQ Level 5
LEVEL 7
Master’s Degree MA, MSc, MPhil etc
Postgraduate Certificate/Postgraduate Diploma
LEVEL 6 University Degree BA, BSc etc Degree Apprenticeship
NVQ Level 4
LEVEL 5 Diploma of Higher Education
Foundation Degree FdA, FdSc
HND
LEVEL 4 Certificate of Higher Education
HNC
Higher Apprenticeship
LEVEL 3 ‘A’ Level
A2
AS Advanced/Extended Diploma (National Diploma) L3 Diploma (National Certificate) NVQ Level 3
LEVEL 2 GCSE Grades A-C Higher Diploma NVQ Level 2
LEVEL 1 GCSE Grades D-G L1 Diploma NVQ Level 1
ENTRY
LEVEL* Entry Level Award, Certificate, Diploma, Skills for Life etc
*Entry level is comprised of three sub-levels: Entry 1, Entry 2 and Entry 3