NVQ'S have been around for an incredible ten years.
When they started they were a catalyst for change.
Never again will the content of vocational education and training be dominated by the teaching institutions.
No longer will important groups of workers like care assistants, security staff, cleaners, and those on factory production lines have no recommended pattern of training, or qualifications to attest to the skills they have achieved - with a consequent impact on their status and earning power.
The NVQ system therefore has some plusses.
It also has some deep seated flaws.
During the past few years there have been several reports cataloguing the weaknesses, but the fundamental flaws have rarely been adequately dealt with even where they have been hinted at.
Of these the effective identification and assessment of knowledge, understanding and awareness is probably the most important.
It was a fundamental principle of how NVQ's were fashioned that knowledge and understanding (awareness was never mentioned) would emerge like practical skills, from normal activity at the workplace.
Whilst this belief may have been honestly held by some theoreticians, it also had a great advantage, in selling the system to employers - they would no longer be required to give day release, or pay fees, for their staff to do their learning off the job.
However you can't pluck solid knowledge and understanding out of the air, whilst doing your job, as a sort of by-product of working a lathe, keyboarding a letter, or getting out the week's pay schedule.
Most disciplines are mastered through a series of building blocks, which need to be taken in logical and progressive order.
They rarely follow the pattern of "standards" derived from functional analysis, still less the sequence of tasks on the job.
For learners to be able to understand what they have to learn, and teachers what they have to teach, knowledge and understanding needs to be fashioned into a curriculum, which to date is lacking.
