NVQ is failing young people

By Pat Field, proprietor of the Rosie Lea Montessori Nursery in Leeds In the feature 'Pressure points' (12 April) Richard Dorrance, chief executive of CACHE, says that he does not accept that there were major variations in the standards of NVQs. Nor does he accept that the language of the NVQ system and the complex cross-referencing system poses problems for many candidates either -even though both these issues have recently been raised as areas for concern in a report produced by the Training Standards Council.

However, the truth is that this system has been failing its younger candidates for years, because there is nothing 'vocational' about the way this qualification is marketed. The NVQ system is no longer aimed at, or made easily affordable to, the target group it was supposedly designed for - the unqualified staff already working in childcare, with years of experience and skills.

Sadly, it has evolved as merely the final stage of a well-trodden path from employment office to careers office to training agency for many of today's school leavers. These young women (many of whom are still in need of much support themselves) are then being sold on the notion that a 50 a week training allowance is better than nothing.

While this may be infinitely preferable to languishing elsewhere as an unemployment statistic - helping prune Government figures at the same time - many of these young women then find themselves in an industry they have little interest in, but which is their only means of support.

Training agencies (whose own viability is dependent on maintaining numbers) have little incentive to lose candidates, and so they are periodically assessed and the most tenuous links written up in order to satisfy as much of the 'range' and 'performance criteria' as credibility will allow.

Eventually candidates achieve their awards but, in many cases, with no more than a passing acquaintance of the knowledge and skills necessary to secure a permanent position.