The Rise (and Fall) of NCVQ

Positioning the role of the NCVQ in relation to the rise of skills-based educational discourse is problematic. Many of those involved in the creation and

implementation on NCVQ policies and initiatives would argue that many of the radical revisions to vocational education and training proved not only to be positive but essential interventions in establishing an appropriate skills-based educational system responsive to the needs of industry and the economy (cf. Jessup, 1991, 1997; Training Agency, 1988; NEDC and MSC 1984; CBI, 1990). Others would argue that the intervention of the NCVQ was deeply problematical and one which has inflicted a great deal of collateral damage in attempting to push through such a comprehensive and radical set of ideologically-based reforms (cf. Raggatt and

Williams, 1999; Robinson, 1996; Wolf, 2002; Assiter, 1995; Barnett, 1994; Bennett et al, 2000; Jonathon, 1987).

Both cases have been strongly supported by their particular proponents but irrespective of the merits (or otherwise) of either viewpoint, what does seem clear is that the legacy of the NCVQ has been to provide startling contrasts in what is a deeply fractured educational debate, one which seems focussed around an idea that not only are skills partly constitutive of education, but - for followers of this influential industrial and economically derived ideology - they are education. This theme is introduced in the next short section and is returned to later in the enquiry. As an institution NCVQ presided over the most radical change ever undertaken in vocational education and training in Britain. From its formation in 1986, the NCVQ implemented a period of change so rapid that within just a handful of years it had largely dismantled existing qualifications; established a radically new award structure and had used this to validate and publish almost 800 new national Vocational Qualifications (NVQ’s); and - with the help and assistance of the MSC - engaged in determining industrial standards of competence with more than 180

Industry Lead Bodies (ILB’s). Yet just ten years after its inception the NCVQ had ceased to exist and by October of 1997 it had merged with the Schools Curriculum and Assessment Authority (SCAA) to become the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). Its impact on contemporary approaches and its legacy on discursive practice make interesting reading.

By May of 1995, 95% of all occupations were covered by ‘standards of

competence’. There were 794 National Vocational Qualifications which had been created and accredited (Wolf, 2002:75). Whilst the ‘demand’ for these new qualifications was a central and continuing aspect of NCVQ discourse, the reality did not always appear to match the rhetoric. By 1996 for example there were 364 of these new qualifications which had never been awarded to even a single candidate; a further 43 had each only ever been awarded to a single candidate and many others had not reached double figures (Wolf, 2002:76). In fact, just 42 of the total 794 NVQ’s accounted for 83% of the total number of awards, most of which were themselves re-workings of long-established craft awards (ibid). It is, by

any account, a spectacular level of achievement - that so radical a revision to the existing provision could have taken place and that so much new provision should have been made available in so short a time. By the same token it can be taken as an equally spectacular level of failure - that so few of those it was intended to benefit should fail to embrace the new vocational initiative. Researching NVQs in the early 1990’s brought me into direct contact with the anxieties and concerns of the council on this matter. I was researching into current levels of success rates on particular NVQs and attempting to establish comparisons to other equivalent vocational awards. Their response was extremely secretive, they would only agree to supply (highly misleading) registration figures and when more direct pressure was applied that they supply figures (as GCLI and BTEC had done) this simply brought a flat refusal and claims that the data were ‘too commercially sensitive’ to release (Spencer, 1995).

The impact which the various initiatives undertaken by NCVQ have had on educational discourse appear to be correlated both with aspects the NCVQ (and subsequent government agencies) have taken to be its successes. Examples of which might be; industrial standards of competence, assessment, learning

outcomes, skills development and transfer, performance at work as a measure of ‘educational attainment’ rather than time served or examined knowledge and ‘core skills’; and its failures, examples of which might be; the refusal of other ‘outmoded’ vocational awards to disappear - in 1996 for example, NVQ accounted for only 25% of vocational awards conferred (Robinson, 1996); and in the very low industrial take-up of work-based NVQ programmes - more than 95% of all NVQ programmes - designed for work place delivery were conducted in colleges of further education (IMS, 1994); or the changes to the curriculum which have (in many sectors) resulted in full-time programmes of study being reduced from an average of 28 class contact hours per week to less than 14 (cf. Spencer 1995). Many of these claims and counter claims appear to be somewhat antithetical in nature. For example, the contrast between the assertion that 95% of occupations covered by the standards of competence which were industrially based, dictated and ‘demanded’ by industry (Jessup, 1991,1997; CBI, 1991,1994; DTI, 1994) seems rather at odds with the counter-assertion that it was almost always

consultants rather than industrialists who engaged in the process of setting standards. Smithers (1993) indicated that such persons - lacked both industrial and educational experience - “[and] engaged with NCVQ philosophy as a

business opportunity”. Others suggest that the ILBs charged with the development of standards often found themselves “inquorate because of a lack of industrial interest or commitment” (Stewart and Hamlin, 1992; Parsons and Marshall, 1995). The CBI itself, discovered after commissioning a survey of employees in 1994 that only 3% were working towards an NVQ (IMS, 1994). The largest single reason cited by employers as to why they were not engaging with NVQs was that they were not perceived as having relevance to their business (CBI, 1994) a curiously strange statement to make given that business ‘had demanded’ such qualifications in the first place (Smithers, 1993). It is perhaps indicative of the strongly

ideological nature of the NCVQ’s position (established by industrial and economic imperatives) that as Wolf (2002) points out; despite the clearly poor penetration of NVQ’s into industrial training that when the NCVQ came under criticism for failing to deliver on its promises “the CBI sprang to [its] defence” (p77).

This example is perhaps indicative of the rather divided nature of NCVQ’s impact on vocational education and training. Taken together with some of the previous issues discussed earlier, it may also give an indication of some of the discursive practices which were instigated by the emergent programme of NVQ activity. It is of some significance for the subsequent examination of the impact and effects of skills-based educational discourse on educational discursive practice that by the time of the dissolution of the NCVQ in 1996 the assumption which linked education with skills and skills with economic performance had become (and has remained) virtually unchallenged (Drew, 1998).