Work Based Learning: Linking Academic and Vocational Qualifications

Note and References

• Watts , F. 1989 . ‘The Extension of the National Vocational Qualifications Frameworks to Professional Level Qualifications’ . Clinical Psychology , December : 33 – 37 . Watts reports: ‘The British Psychological Society welcomes many elements of the NCVQ approach to vocational qualifications, and finds the implicit emphasis on the validity of assessment and training procedures wholly congenial.’ The only reservations are that professional competence should include professional flexibility and that professional assessments should cover the full range of competence
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• The focus throughout this paper is on paid work but this could often apply to unpaid work as well. Analyses of unpaid work are beginning to appear, e.g. Butler, L. Leigh, A. Miles, R. (1993) Unpaid Work Butler Leigh, Miles, Ashbourne. However, while these will help assessment and accreditation of unpaid work in voluntary organisations, some reservation is still necessary over unpaid work in informal settings such as the home. Here the generation, collection and interpretation of evidence to ensure safe inferences of competence are specially problematic. (See Barbara Shelborn Developments Ltd., ‘Understanding Knowledge’ in Competence and Assessment, No. 3, September 1990.)
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• Work based learning is a relatively new concept in British education and training literature although it has been used for a long time in the USA even to the extent of an Office of Work Based Learning being created in the Department of Labour. It is not used, for instance, in the Open University MA Module, Education, Training and Employment (E817J which started in 1990. Margaret Levy claims the first use of the term in the UK in her project work in the early 1980s for the MSC which itself spoke of ‘the emphasis now placed on work based learning in vocational training’ in MSC (1981) A New Training Initiative: An Agenda for Action’.
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• One test of how far an institution has moved in the recognition of work based learning is if it includes accredited learning from this source in deciding honours classifications
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• Henkel , M. 1990 . ‘Higher Education and the Preparation For Work’ . Higher Education Policy , 3 ( 4 ) : 20 – 22 . summarises a study of the undergraduate curriculum in English higher education institutions and notes that some of the most successful curricular changes involved several groups of stakeholders e.g. ‘academics concerned about the quality of their educational offering and students anxious about their employability’
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• Currently these are most pronounced for the 16‐19 age group where there is a determined effort, strongly supported by the CBI, to create not only a national framework of vocational qualifications but of all qualifications with general national vocational qualifications holding parity of esteem with academic A Levels (Times Higher Education Supplement, 12 March 1993). Global competitiveness in general and the changing occupational structure in the UK in particular are demanding flexibility and relevance of academic programmes and especially the expansion of continuing professional development. The EC has made the blurring of continuing and initial education a political priority (EC Memorandum on Higher Education, 1991
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• This was most conspicuous in student work placements
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• ibid
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