Food and drink employers are being urged to get involved in the development of new occupational qualifications for people working in the sector.

Operatives and frontline supervisors in the industry will soon be able to achieve new, publicly-accredited qualifications offering recognition of their workplace skills outside the NVQ structure.

Employers from all industry sectors will be able to participate in the design of the qualification but the food and drink sector, through the Improve sector skills council, has already been involved in a pilot scheme for one of the qualifications – a Level 2 award in poultry inspection – which is due to be rolled out in the New Year.

Now food and drink manufacturers are being urged by Improve to join sector steering groups to identify needs for more of the occupational qualifications, which will, eventually, be developed for all levels of the workforce including management.

“In the 20 years since NVQs were introduced, they have been the only publicly-accredited occupational accreditations most people could aspire to,” said Jack Matthews, Improve chief executive. “But in many industries, including food and drink manufacturing, some employers have found that the framework for NVQs has been too rigid and not relevant enough to the needs of their workforce.

“Many workers have valuable competencies that they should be able to have recognised through a publicly-accredited qualification. When you consider, however, that in food and drink manufacturing, for instance, a Level 2 NVQ – the most popular benchmark – is equivalent to five good GCSEs, this may not be achievable for a lot of workers.”

Now the shackles were off and there was an opportunity to introduce, alongside NVQs, a “whole raft” of new qualifications that could be designed around competency skills for real jobs, be more accessible and more achievable. They would allow people to complete basic-level qualifications first and build on them with “increasing numbers of bite-sized chunks of learning”.

Learners achieving a Level 2 award, such as the piloted award in poultry inspection, could opt to achieve more Level 2 units in different areas of competency until they achieved a Level 2 certificate, which recognises a broader ability in relevant workplace skills, or a Level 2 diploma, likely to be the equivalent of a Level 2 NVQ.

Alternatively, they could opt to try Level 3 units, which can be combined to form either a certificate or a diploma.

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