Industry Assessors

[robwest]

Working in partnership with Skillscene, the NSA is looking to influence, promote and support the provision and uptake of high quality, industry relevant Continued Professional Development for those working in the Technical, Production and Crafts fields of theatre practice.

 

The NSA is pleased to be able to promote individuals who have successfully gone through the A1 NVQ industry assessor training programme. The training for this covers what Assessors need to know: to plan, mentor, conduct assessments, and manage candidates taking National Vocational Qualifications (NVQ) through to qualification.

 

The issue of course is that we don't want to be training assessors when there aren't the vocational qualifications for people to assess. However we also don't want to lose the fact that there are trained assessors working in the industry, and they should be promoted. What are your thoughts? Should we be training more industry assessors or simply concentrating on identifying and promoting those we've got?

 

If you are a qualified industry assessor yourself and wish to be included on the NSA website (free of charge) please send a short biography, current photo and a list of your areas of specialism to nsa@ccskills.org.uk.

[paulears]

Do you mean 'promote' as in

To raise to a more important or responsible job or rank.

To advance (a student) to the next higher grade.

To urge the adoption of

To attempt to sell or popularize by advertising or publicity

To help establish or organize

 

I'm not aware that we've ever had any posts (I could be wrong) about NVQs in our industry, and I don't think any members have mentioned they are assessors.

 

Training more assessors makes sense if there are enough people actively working on a qualification that needs the assessment.

 

I'd have thought that here, we're more likely to have people more suitable to be assessors, than potential students on a course.

 

The way things seem to work is that young people do college, then uni - and then once graduated seek work in the industry. Those within the industry already working don't seem to actually identify training needs that they cannot cover themselves. On here, it's been pointed out many times that in our industry, paper qualifications don't actually count for very much at all - even new graduates find this out very quickly. People working on permanent contracts in venues are often not the best paid, and sometimes the fragile finances of a theatrical venue simply don't provide spare funding for training and the eventual request for higher pay.

 

The self-employed amongst us have on offer all sorts of courses, but people seem to only take those that provide them with practical, not academic skills that will help with broadening their skillset.

 

So I for one, am not totally convinced that extra qualifications actually generate higher pay, or are much of a lever for the next job. when changing jobs, it's your skills and your history that count. An NVQ at any level is nice to have - especially for the people who don't have much in the way of formal qualifications, but it's not seen as essential. If the employer wishes to pay for it, the staff will do it - but I'm not certain the employers, in these stretched financial times will see the need to do this.

P

[robwest]

Thanks for your views P. Much apprecaited.

 

I mean 'promote' in all those ways you've described. Skillscene and PLASA have had recent success training Assessors and Internal Verifiers, and they would argue that critical mass is starting to be created ensuring that there is an infrastructure in place to meet the Industry's needs as it moves towards vocational qualifications working with employers and employees to satisfy the needs of the sector. At the NSA we try to promote those who have the A1 assessor qualification as we'd like to see freelancers in the industry being used more in this way.

 

As regards over supply of assessors over students for courses you are right to flag that up, but technical theatre courses and student numbers are increasing certainly in our own FE Founder Colleges. Our research and consultation has shown us that there is an over-supply of performers but little demand from students for courses to fill other skills gaps. That's why we present Offstage Choices around the country (www.nsa-ccskills.org.uk) to raise awareness amongst young people of the job roles that exist backstage and offstage in our NSA member venues and beyond.

 

The "Framework" devised by Tony Bond, and developed by PLASA for qualifications, and by Skillscene for a Continuing Professional Development tool working with the National Skills Academy; continues to play a major role in technical theatre. Using this as a basis and assessing work based competence against National Occupational Standards will ensure that through qualification and CPD, the industry will move towards safe working practices in an identifiable and consistent manner, recognising skills and knowledge through assessment processes.

 

Rob

[paulears]

Ok I see.

 

I'm a little confused as to what the qualifications actually are - I did look on your website, but they're not actually mentioned. These FE founder Colleges, you mention - you say

technical theatre courses and student numbers are increasing

Which ones?

 

You've also mentioned

there is an over-supply of performers but little demand from students for courses to fill other skills gaps.

There are indeed plenty of budding performers, but what technical theatre courses exist at the same colleges as the ones full of performers? In reality, not that many - and we often have people on here moaning that their local college, even though it does performance, doesn't do production. In my own area, there are 3 colleges. One stopped performing arts totally, the other does performance only, and the third runs performance and production - but are having trouble filling the available places.

 

At present, new people do seem to have to travel a fair bit to find colleges - but as they'll probably have to travel for work, it's good practice.

 

The assessors you speak of will be assessing different qualifications to the ones normally taken by 'normal' students, so presumably, they will be assessing people already in work, not training for it? Have I got this right?

 

If you want assessors, then they will have to gain your A1 assessor qualification - some people may be interested in this - but some, spent a while getting the old 'D' number assessor awards, only for them to become obsolete very quickly. How complicated is the training for being an assessor.

paul

[kerry davies]

Rob, I was at a meeting years ago with Tony Hall regarding NSA, Skillscene and CC Skills and have followed this subject through the stages right up to the launch of creative apprenticeships, so I am prejudiced.

 

This is merely a personal opinion but the end result seems to have been a few existing training schemes reconfigured as apprenticeships to access the funding and funding being diverted into soft skills as most "live" apprenticeships are in event management rather than event production. This is not what was intended by the industry back when Alison Tickell was involved. The complaint amongst event production companies at least was that graduates were being turned out with all the soft skills and none of the work ethic required in live events...twiddle the knobs, yes, unload the truck, no.

 

My impression from the Wales creative apprenticeship launch is that colleges have seized on it for their own agenda and that CC Skills staff outnumber apprenticeships. Jobsfortheboys stuff. The only genuine apprenticeships seemed to be the Milennium Centre trainees who would have been there with or without the scheme anyway. There were a few admin posts in museums which were basically cheap labour for specific projects with finite time-scales, and that was it.

 

The current economic/educational climate means that course numbers will not increase, and how you can say that there is under-provision of backstage role courses I do not know. How many LX courses at degree level are there compared to the handful of vacancies? More courses, let alone students, than real jobs. You can also bet your boots that Arts funding cuts will mean a disproportionate loss of technical jobs as the luvvies will take care of their own and now seems a crazy time to expand into a new educational direction.

 

All that notwithstanding, your last post is full of "brochure-speak" but does not illuminate what it is that you/NSA want. Is it for the teacher qualified BR members to gain more paper qualifications? Is it for the young 'uns to sign up for NVQ's? Or is it merely another income stream for colleges to replace falling numbers? £300 and fifteen weeks for another piece of paper when there is no obvious use to which it can be put seems speculative. Chicken and egg, methinks?

Attempting to move away from paper qualifications by asking for paper qualifications is indeed madness.

[robwest]

Whilst I apprecaite your concerns I am sorry Kerry that you seem so negative about what we are trying to do. I can reassure you that we at the National Skills Academy believe we have an important role to fulfil (a memebrship organisation led by Industry) to develop a programme for employers and workers to deal with the key issues that exist: that currently there are no formal, accredited non-graduate entry routes into the sector; that clear information, advice and guidance on careers is not available; and that there are no industry-wide professional development standards. We are all on the same side you know. I've been working for nearly 30 years in the theatre industry. But don't moan - get involved! If we don't seem right for you partners such as Skillscene with whom we work closely to promote professional development for people working backstage are always open to you. Perhaps you might also want to put yourself forward as a Industry Assessor?

To answer your question Paul - the old A1 has been replaced by a series of new assessor qualifications and courses - which are much simpler and are offered by a number of colleges. However you are both right in that we don't want qualifications for qualifcations sake - but the bottom line is that we need real people from industry assessing the future workers in our industry, and real training for real jobs.

[kerry davies]

Rob, you are correct in that I am feeling negative, but never towards the principles you promote. I do not believe that the partnership power balance between CC Skills/Skillscene/NSA/Founder colleges is what anyone intended and that the colleges have hijacked delivery as well as most of the money.

CCSkills have taken a year with 16 full-time staff working on this one area to have no mention of precise qualifications and only the promise of a Framework on their website. What's occurring?

 

I could go on and I have tried for several hours to respond less negatively but so much of what you advocate, though excellent in principle, just is not happening at Founder college level. One actually wrote that experience was worth nothing without paper and were rude enough as to fail to reply at all to an offer of discounted Safety Passport training.

 

Do not for one minute think I am negative toward your aims and principles, I live them. I am dismayed, saddened and angered by the apparent sell-out to the commercial interests of FE colleges. Plus ca change.

 

Please do email and we can carry on a discussion but this isn't doing BR any good at all and I don't think it is doing your original posts intention much good either.

[robwest]

16 full-time staff working on this one area! Where did you get that from? If only!

 

Anyway I'd be interested to hear more about your Safety Passport Training, and to explore how we might promote it through the National Skills Academy network of over 230 industry members and 20 FE Founder Colleges. Email me details to robert.west@ccskills.org.uk

[kerry davies]

National Audit Office report on C C Skills. Easily found. Staff were increased from 11 to 16 to work on qualifications unless, that is, someone was telling the NAO porkies.

 

For others info I was referring to the PSA sponsored Live Events Production Safety Passport which is available from several tutor/providers who can be found on the website http://www.psa.org.uk/about-us-safety-passports_intro.asp

[Brian]

...don't moan - get involved!...Perhaps you might also want to put yourself forward as a Industry Assessor?...

A major problem, as I see it, is that the only people who can afford to get involved are...

 

a) People employed by educational establishment or

b) People employed by larger employers

 

With the vast majority of people working 'backstage' being freelancers or employed in small companies (and I mean true small companies not the government's ideas of 'small') they simply can't afford to get involved.

 

It's not a problem unique to this exercise; just look at any attempts to write 'standards', especially European ones.

 

And as I'm waiting for the kettle to boil...

 

Has anyone else read the NOS for Technical Theatre? All 336 pages of it?

 

Is it just me or does it read like 336 pages of 'cut and paste' followed by a 'search and replace'?

 

It falls into the classic trap of equating length of document with usefulness and hardly meets its stated aim of

 

National Occupational Standards aim to provide a clear description of what you need to know and what you need to be able to do to perform a job successfully.

(my bold)

[Junior8]

For others info I was referring to the PSA sponsored Live Events Production Safety Passport which is available from several tutor/providers who can be found on the website http://www.psa.org.u...ports_intro.asp

 

As it happens I covered the launch of that scheme - astonishingly in Feb 2004! - which, as an outsider, I thought filled a useful niche especially for self-employed riggers who had to prove competence to a venue. Indeed I think that's where the impetus came from. The best thing about it as originally set up was that the core day was transferable between all sorts of safety critical sectors while the candidate could chose sector specific issues fro the second session of training. The brief was concise and the cost eminently affordable - thus addressing Brian's point just above. It was I thought a model for industry specific training and accreditation.

[paulears]

Thinking again about this topic - the title is "Do we need more industry assessors?" - but we're not really answering this one. The answer is just maths, surely?

 

If you have X people needing assessment, then you work out how is practical - and then this tells you if you're short or not. Registration fees should cover assessment costs. So the number of assessors is just a commercial decision. when schools and colleges run qualifications, they have suitable people to assess, and then the people issuing the qualifications who also charge registration fees cover the cost of their own verifiers who keep an eye on the assessors.

 

When new people start doing their own qualifications, it's just part of the system to provide assessment. As I see it, if an employer wants to give their staff a proper qualification, then somebody has to assess it. No doubt they can select one of their own staff to become an assessor, but assessing isn't fun, or interesting - so while a teacher probably/possibly enjoys this kind of thing, there's no guarantee anyone will volunteer. So are we saying that becoming an assessor is a specific job? If so, it's a dull one. Most teachers I know enjoy teaching and HATE assessing.

 

BTEC assessors work often as teacher in schools or lecturers in colleges. A few like me returned to work in the industry, but kept involved. Non-mainstream training means that the assessment role, if carried out within work time, may well not be a popular role. It's perhaps no co-incidence that the verifier fees are pretty similar to a freelancers day rate. If somebody takes on an industry assessor role outside of their work role, they want money. Is the money available?

 

Do people like PLASA need more assessors and verifiers? If they do, just advertise and people will do it, if the money is ok.

 

From my own experience, it seems many of my old colleagues who used to verify BTEC cannot do it any longer - their schools and colleges cannot afford to give them time off, and they're reluctant to spend all their leisure time doing it. Industry assessment needs doing when people are working, if any of it needs doing at the location - so it can be very expensive.

 

I got the definite impression at BTEC meetings with PLASA/APRS etc. that they were amazed the funding word was constantly used to decide if things would be done, or not - them having the feeling that qualifications should not be linked to availability of funding. Now they're trying it themselves and perhaps discovering it's a bit more difficult than they thought?

 

So - is there actually a shortage of assessors? If there is, advertise. If there's not, then what's the issue?