{"id":64,"date":"2009-10-04T18:04:45","date_gmt":"2009-10-04T17:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidhing.com\/?p=64"},"modified":"2013-12-31T15:56:39","modified_gmt":"2013-12-31T15:56:39","slug":"when-training-is-not-training","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhing.com\/chaotic-tortoise\/2009\/10\/when-training-is-not-training\/","title":{"rendered":"When Training is Not Training"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FishVQ\"

This fish has been recently upskilled.<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week I turned down an opportunity to do a government funded NVQ Business Administration training programme.\u00a0 My reasons for this stretch beyond laziness and arrogance.<\/p>\n

First of all, weighing in rather close to the arrogance side of things, I would feel sorry for the NVQ level 2 when it had to hang around with some of my other qualifications that are bigger and meaner and would pick on the poor thing.\u00a0 However, this was not my only reason.\u00a0 Any qualification is at least a qualification, it could look ok on a CV, and free training is after all free training.\u00a0 Of course, in this case, it wasn\u2019t really training.<\/p>\n

I did sign up for the programme after seeing the list of modules that were available.\u00a0 Some of them were ridiculous affairs like a module in \u201ccomplying with health and safety\u201d or \u201cBeing punctual:\u00a0 Getting up that five minutes earlier\u201d, but some of them looked quite useful, such as modules on the more advanced features of Microsoft Word or Excel, with which I sometimes find I have gaps in my knowledge.\u00a0 However, the main reason for me deciding to abandon the venture was that I\u2019d misunderstood what was meant by \u201coptional units\u201d.\u00a0 What happens is that an assessor comes and follows you for a few days whilst you\u2019re doing your job, works out what you do, and then signs you up for the modules most relevant for your work, or rather, signs you up for modules that you can not learn anything from as you do the content on a daily basis.\u00a0 This to me sounds like a reversal of the basic premise of education.<\/p>\n

When I was at university, I met a French girl who was from France who very obviously spoke French as her first language.\u00a0 She took half a unit of \u201cBeginners French\u201d in her first year, and unsurprisingly got very good marks.\u00a0 It was a complete waste of her time and of the university\u2019s time, but she sailed through a half-unit in her first year and jumped through a hoop to get a bit closer to passing her first year.\u00a0 This NVQ programme appears to be fourteen weeks of doing exactly that.\u00a0 I would be doing modules in things that I was already doing and could do in my sleep.<\/p>\n

The truth is that this is not a training scheme.\u00a0 This is somebody giving you a certificate to tell you that you can do your job, which hopefully should be inferred by any other prospective employer looking at your previous years of service and a decent recommendation from your previous employer.\u00a0 Instead of \u201cupskilling the workforce\u201d, a phrase that marks this out as a government scheme for it\u2019s lack of sense, this is instead \u201cpigeonholing the workforce\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0 This isn\u2019t helping anybody\u2019s diversity or flexibility in the office.\u00a0 If anything it\u2019s restricting what they can and can\u2019t do by putting it down in official looking writing that they are most suitable for Business Administration, tacitly implying for many people that they\u2019re probably not much good for anything else.<\/p>\n

Although the reams of fiddly paperwork were also off putting, as it was that sort of paperwork that seems designed to make you feel very stupid as you\u2019re just not entirely sure what they want you to write down, I didn\u2019t mind this so much.\u00a0 The final nail in the coffin was the discovery that on completing the course, they give you fifty pounds, referred to in sinister tones by the initial assessor as \u201cthe incentive\u201d.\u00a0 In my limited life experience, the old adage \u201cyou get what you pay for\u201d generally applies, and when you pay -\u00a350 for a course, that\u2019s probably the value you get out of it.\u00a0 On the plus side, I can now without any feeling of guilt state \u201cI wouldn\u2019t do an NVQ in Business Administration if you paid me!\u201d because I didn\u2019t and I haven\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Just to really hit this point home, this scheme is fourteen weeks of paperwork and ongoing assessment that the government is bank rolling.\u00a0 Not only that, even they obviously don\u2019t feel like it\u2019s worth anything, as they feel the need to encourage people to play along by handing out money with each certificate.\u00a0 This just strikes me as a colossal waste of time and money.<\/p>\n

In an attempt to at least try and throw a little balance in, it has been pointed out to me that some people might want a qualification to prove their worth on some level if they\u2019ve missed out earlier on in the educational process.\u00a0 This is fine, but it\u2019s an awful shame that someone can be lead to feel that their lives are not fulfilled or that they are somehow inferior people without bits of paper with letters or a percentage grading on them.\u00a0 There seems to be such an emphasis on the importance of gaining qualifications at the expense of people actually making something of themselves.\u00a0 Society is full of people without a formal education that have risen to dizzying heights of success, and equally full of apparently highly educated who are as thick as two short planks and depressingly under achieving.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week I turned down an opportunity to do a government funded NVQ Business Administration training programme.\u00a0 My reasons for this stretch beyond laziness and arrogance. 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