Practical Training and Qualifications

Working in the Industry and Personal Development

An FE college or private training provider is not the only way you can get started with the practical side of training and assessment, and remember that it isn’t actually possible to achieve an NVQ in any subject simply by attending and passing a workshop based course. For instance, you may have some practical skills already (perhaps achieved by having done DIY jobs in your home). If so it may be that you will be able to cope with simple straightforward installation and repair jobs once you have completed our Installation Theory Course. You will then understand the theory, and this knowledge, together with your existing skills, and the back-up from the tutor support that is included with our courses may give you sufficient confidence to start doing simple jobs, perhaps for friends and family first, gradually increasing your skills as your confidence grows. This is a viable way to develop both skills, and the portfolio of evidence that is required for the NVQ qualification, and if this is your aspiration over a period of time you can develop a small business too.

A good (and some people would argue the best) and in my experience usually by far the quickest way to get the practical skills and on-site experience that is essential to achieve an NVQ is for people to find a ‘friendly plumber’ to give them experience. The best way for a person to do this seems to be for them to ask around their circle of friends, family, work colleagues, their church, or social club or even people ‘in the pub’ to find out if anyone they know knows a plumber who might be willing to help? Experience shows that it doesn’t seem to matter if the link between the person and the plumber is tenuous. On the one hand simply asking a plumber who is a total stranger to help by providing experience will often just result in the plumber saying no out of hand without even thinking about the possibility. However, when there is a link between the person and the plumber (through friends or family etc), and a friend or family member initially asks on their behalf, then it is much more likely that the plumber will think about this and may be willing to give them some experience and the opportunity to get the on-site experience and evidence that is needed in return for the persons help, perhaps on an ad-hoc basis at first to fit in with both their and the plumbers other commitments…

 

How long should training and assessment take?

The actual time required to train and gather the evidence of practical ability varies depending both upon the range of jobs you are able to do, and how quickly you can develop the skills required, and perhaps 9 to 12 months is a reasonable target for a mature person who is keen and willing to work hard to put a portfolio of evidence together and get it assessed. The portfolio of evidence towards the NVQ has to be assessed by a qualified C&G assessor, this is to see whether it meets the requirements of the qualification and so is valid and covers the range of evidence needed. The more evidence that can be collected before registering with C&G then the less the assessment process is likely to cost. Also, the assessor will usually need to question the candidate about the evidence they present to verify that it is their work. The assessor also has to visit the candidate whilst he or she is working on the job (on-site-assessment) to check and see if the candidate is competent, so it is useful to select a fairly large job for this, and a replacement bathroom installation, particularly one that involves moving or installing a new radiator is ideal. The assessor should write a report detailing what they observe – this too provides further evidence for the portfolio.

It is necessary to register with an accredited C&G assessment centre in order to get the correct C&G documentation, and a centre that knows about and can operate APL (Accreditation of Prior Learning, which is sometimes also known as OSAT, or On Site Assessment and Testing) is best to get the portfolio documentation because they should be able to evaluate whether you have existing skills and qualifications that may have some value towards an NVQ.