Overhaul of Vocational Training System Founders

If you are considering training to be a plumber or vocational training more generally, the news that the planned overhaul of the UK’s vocational educational system has come unstuck will pique your interest. Following the damning Wolf review of vocational courses, the minister of education, Michael Gove, promised a thorough overhaul of the system and the QCF (Qualifications and Credit Framework). The aim of this new framework was to:

• Set a country-wide standard for vocational training, ensuring the high standard of education across the UK;
• Establish levels and gradings across the vocational system to monitor progress and gauge achievement;
• Integrate the vocational system with the current academic system, allowing vocational courses a points system which would function as a comparable equivalent.

Unfortunately, for those considering training to become plumber, or establishing themselves into any sort of trade, these changes have foundered utterly and have folded a month before their due completion.

The issue with courses for those interested in training to be a plumber is the hundreds of courses out there which all function in different ways. This makes bringing them all up to a general standard and implementing a thorough, water-tight framework exceedingly difficult. In fact, the whole doomed QCF process has been described as “expensive spaghetti”!

This failure won’t make much difference to those training to be a plumber. Changes are yet to be made and very few training providers are ready for them when they are eventually implemented. They are unlikely to affect those currently training to become a plumber.

In the future, if you are thinking about training to be a plumber, you can expect a more thoroughly regulated system of vocational training with relative values and a clear framework. The industry qualifications you’ll earn, however, will stay the same.

These changes seem to be a fair way off still but, when they are implemented, Access Training are ready to make the change, ensuring quality and consistency across the vocational training courses we offer. If you’d like to find out more about training to be a plumber with industry experts, just take a look at the flexible and varied courses available on our website, or call our team on 0800 345 7492 today.