“Hits nail on head, builds crate”

“They say”, read my client’s email at the end of a long day, “That their materials will map against Management NVQ level seven”. I dropped my pitta bread, and spent the next minute cleaning hummus and olive oil off the laptop keyboard. I hit the reply button, and typed, “Oh they do, do they?”. But it wasn’t enough. I scratched my head with a non-hummusey finger, and then added, “As you well know, I could map………” I paused, “The House at Pooh Corner against any management NVQ you name”

Ok, the expression you are seeking is “hostage to fortune” *. But really! I mean, really! Who were these people intruding with their daft claims at the end of a tiring day?

On a recent piece of work, I was contemplating the wonders of a certificate in management programme specification and came across the provided appendices with the “mapping” to National Occupational Standards. Looking at one of the units of the programme I found that the mapping matrix purported to show that someone had inspected the relationships between the 8 segments of the programme syllabus and no fewer than 16 National Occupational Standards, and from this massive task obtained just 13 “matches”, indicated by ticks in the relevant boxes. I was apparently supposed to seriously believe that all 128 possible matches had been fully considered, and of these only five had been found. Piffle.

“Piffle”? A quick check revealed that to carry out this “mapping” for one National Occupational Standard alone it would have been necessary to inspect 4,838,400 links between, wait for it, “outcomes”, “behaviours”, “General knowledge and understanding”, “Industry specific understanding”, and “content specific knowledge and understanding” statements, and 14 other skills areas which that Standard alone apparently related to, a task that my calculator informed me would have taken around 106 years.

I put it to you that their claim to have diligently and completely performed this mapping was piffle.

There is no point in these mapping exercises between taught programmes and NVQs, except to satisfy the whims of an entirely out of control regulatory system. Who actually cares if a training programme maps onto any standards at all? Certainly not most end-users. Except within the “training industry” itself, the knowledge has almost no value. It doesn’t prove anything useful, where “useful” is a term that implies “of value in achieving a desired end”. The employers’ only concern with a training programme is the desired end that after the course his people perform better, and do so at an acceptable cost. They have little interest or understanding of the standards, and will at best glance at the matrices, and return to consider the more meaningful statements in the programme aims and objectives.

How have we got to this absurd state? Years ago, when National Occupational Standards were a young upstart concept in the field of training, for political reasons employers had to be persuaded they were useful. The first versions were therefore drafted to achieve this acceptance, and were shown to representative employers. Early standards said, essentially, “Hits nail on head” and “Builds a wooden crate”. The employers liked them because this was exactly what they required their people to do.

Then the training industry, never able to let a good thing alone, got hold of these eminently sensible performance statements, and egged-on by regulators and awarding bodies, started to mess about with them. Before too long “Hits nail on head” had become “Uses appropriate equipment safely in an approved manner”, and “Builds a wooden crate” had become “Constructs a range of transportation containers using natural and manmade materials”. These in turn morphed into “Selects appropriate product protection options” and “Approves and directs the use of resources to ensure safe transit of finished products within a protective environment”. To understand what the hell these standards now meant a swathe of explanations was needed, and before long employers found themselves in the lunatic situation where their employee in a blue overall with a hammer was being assessed against a two page list of statements ranging from understanding of endangered hardwoods of the world to what to do in the case of a splinter in the thumb.

Look, "I only told you to build a bloody wooden crate!"

It may well be a hugely profitable activity for some consultants, but it brings us into disrepute. It is selling snake oil. It is a con trick. Mapping training programmes onto these National Occupational Standards is horrifyingly expensive, produces almost meaningless reports, uses forests of paper, and is of no value either to employers or the people undergoing training. It’s time for the bonfire of the inanities.



*NOS in Management, C 6.1, outcome 1: “Put into practice the strategies and plans for change in line with the available resources” – “House at Pooh Corner”, Chapter One.