Defence becomes an Awarding Body

On 2 April this year the MoD became an Awarding Body; able to develop and implement awards shown on the National Qualifications Framework and at levels recognised by civilian employers. While the work to achieve this was in progress, Commander Andy Cropley RN, CO of the Defence School of Languages (DSL) at Beaconsfield, had recognised a problem in the training and assessment of students who were destined for operational postings. He decided to do something about it. This article describes how the two initiatives came together.

Military training has increasingly been recognised by the award of a civilian qualification along with a military one at the end of a course. Sometimes the award can be made on the strength of the military training alone; sometimes it requires further effort from the student. But these qualifications are valuable additions to the CV when life out of uniform becomes a reality.

These civilian qualifications essentially are made up of a number of modules, and when they are successfully achieved, the qualification may be awarded. If a military course covers all the modules – no problem – the student has only to undertake extra studies or assessment if the MoD training does not cover them all.

The government body that oversees this process is the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA). [Warning: a great deal of change is in process in the qualification world; this article covers only the situation as it is, not how it will look in a few months’ or years’ time. For example, the NQF (see below) is likely to have been replaced by the Qualifications and Credit Framework over the next couple of years.] The QCA recognises Awarding Bodies. These are organisations that are allowed to develop and implement awards at various levels on the current National Qualifications Framework (NQF).

Next come the Sector Skills Councils (SSCs). These organisations represent employers, and identify their training and qualifications needs. They develop National Occupational Standards (NOS) that meet those needs, and develop qualifications with Awarding Bodies so that students can become qualified in their various occupations at a number of levels. (Although this may not be absolutely necessary, it is the usual practice and it is very hard to get an award accepted if it does not have SSC support.) Finally, training providers (academic or vocational, or both) train these students in the various subjects to take the exams or assessment that will lead to the awards. The whole edifice is patrolled by assessors and verifiers to ensure quality control of standards, awards and training.

This is, of course, a gross over-simplification of the process – if only anything could be so cut and dried! So there are some organisations developing NOS that are not SSCs, many excellent qualifications are not on the NQF, sniping continues between the academic and vocational lobbies, and there are spurious claims about the equivalence of qualifications at the same level but requiring very different amounts of work.

Returning to Defence, not all military training fits precisely or even closely into these NOS and so there is a range of military qualifications with no civilian equivalence. Despite extensive work mapping the modules that make up military courses and searching for similar ones, some training stubbornly remains outside this box, and so Directorate General Training and Education staff have been seeking QCA approval to become an Awarding Body in their own right, joining 140 others, which range from being well known to extremely obscure, and offer thousands of qualifications or a mere handful.

Lieutenant Colonel Nick Maher and Warrant Officer Class 1 Neil Langridge have been driving the initiative and, over the last two years, have found a way through a labyrinth of rules and regulations. However, they are quick to point out that there is no intention of ‘unpicking relationships with existing Awarding Bodies. The Armed Forces have a very strong brand, which includes MoD civil servants, and new awards will be used sparingly where there is no existing arrangement with an Awarding Body or where Defence can do it better.’ Existing accreditation and the awards it brings will continue; so there is no intention to become a player of the stature of Edexel or City & Guilds. But the Defence Awarding Body (DAB) has already started to operate in a small way, and this could grow now that the concept has been trialled.

Over at Beaconsfield, the CO was facing a challenge. Historically, 12 of the most important languages to the military are taught at the School, with training in some 35 others carried out by external providers. For anyone who might think this is a soft option, some 100,000 man training days take place a year at the School, students work eight-hour days and are expected to study for three hours a night in their own time, and one-third of the output go straight into front-line operational employment.

Students are taught at levels from elementary to professional; the only level not covered is that of native speaker or fully bilingual. Class sizes peak at 12, courses run from six weeks to 18 months, and students vary from middle-aged staff officers, who dropped French at school as soon as they could, to keen young specialists learning a fourth tongue.

To date, qualifications have been awarded by civilian bodies so that the exams and assessments have been much the same as those at any other language school. But Cropley observed that they did not necessarily reflect the realities of operational circumstances. Indeed, he observed something very interesting when military exercises were imposed on classroom-practised students. Mock riots, short-tempered senior officers, vehicle searches, people with strict cultural ideas and all the other distractions of interpreting in real life often showed that the classroom genius was so flummoxed they forgot their skills, while the student who used to hide at the back often outperformed them.

Front-line commanders are not slow to communicate with schools that they believe are not producing the standards they need, and this civilian-style learning to meet military requirements clearly needed to be improved. (Quite apart from anything else, it was found that superimposing a 60-hour exercise shortly before the final exams led to students getting lower marks because they were in fact preparing for two rather different things at the same time.)

What was needed was a different method of assessment – one that would fully reflect military realities, but would be accepted as being at the same level as its civilian equivalent. In the language world, qualifications mean money and there was no intention of depriving students of the rewards of their labours. Assessment needed gradually to be removed from the classroom civilian world and brought back under the control of the trainers. Work started to develop an assessment system that would contain both continuous monitoring and some form of final test.

The problem was the familiar one: to meet both operational requirements and civilian assessment standards more would have to be taught; but lengthening the course was unlikely to be an option. So, some heavy pruning took place so that both requirements could be met. Happily it proved possible to assign military qualification levels to their appropriate position on the NQF, with the DAB delivering the awards under the authority of the QCA.

CILT – the National Centre for Languages – has been acting as the SSC in this field and has been responsible for producing NOS. DSL has also been involved with the University of Westminster as an Awarding Body. There is no intention to sever ties with these organisations; the idea is simply to develop qualifications that more truly reflect the operational requirement. So the new awards (at various levels on the NQF) will carry the stamp of the MoD, CILT and the University. All three bodies will therefore be authenticating the award so that it will have the same value as any other award at the same level on the NQF.

The first of the new awards were presented last month to students who had been studying French, and the plan is to roll them out for all students at the School over the next year, and for all Defence language students within the next two years.

Future possibilities are interesting. A key advantage is that students can be trained more exactly to deal with front-line tasks, with better information on individuals’ performance and potential being available to commanders. The ‘kite mark’ stamps of external authorities will also make DSL’s awards more attractive to partner nations, other government departments and foreign armed forces. While many of the training modules or units will be ‘open’ – available for anyone – it is likely that some will be ‘closed’ – taught only under the auspices of the School. And, with the implementation of the Defence Training Review, it is likely that these developments will make DSL a more attractive proposition to future partners.

Accreditation of military qualifications to civilian awards has been gathering momentum in recent years. From very little a decade ago, vast numbers of military courses now finish with an award that is proof to external organisations and individuals that a certain standard has been reached. Even if an award is not immediately available, some extra assessment or learning can often produce the same happy result. However, there has often been some unease that military funding has been used to produce a qualification that has no immediate military value, and also that Service people in trades and specialities in which there is no discernable civilian equivalent are missing out.

The DAB should be able to address both these areas. A qualification that is on the NQF will ensure that learning is firmly anchored to the military outcome, while skills and learning that are difficult to map to civilian equivalents can now be recognised. There may be a danger that some employers will somehow regard DAB awards as less valuable, but award snobbery is not new and partly reflects ongoing reluctance by academics to recognise the true value and equivalence of vocational qualifications.

However, the future of DAB looks bright, and will involve more work as other military skills users, trainers and assessors step forward to develop qualifications that fully reflect both the needs at the sharp end and civilian standards in a less demanding environment. Whatever the road ahead, it is sure to be an interesting one.