Give me vocation interface, demands baroness

VOCATIONAL qualifications should "interface" with academic study in higher education, education minister Tessa Blackstone told awarding bodies, education providers and employers this week.

Speaking at a meeting of the Management Charter Initiative (MCI), a government-backed management development lead body, Baroness Blackstone praised a group of business schools for integrating vocational management standards and National Vocational Qualifications into degrees and MBA courses.

"These are encouraging developments which point the way to how NVQs in other professional areas ought to be able to interface with more academically-based qualifications," she said.

Baroness Blackstone's speech will do nothing to allay the fears of vice chancellors worried that the drive to entrench vocational qualifications in higher education will threaten academic autonomy.

Last week Sir William Stubbs, the chairman of qualifications super-quango the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, said that NVQs would be strengthened so they can be integrated into higher education programmes.

In her speech, Baroness Blackstone hailed the QCA's "firmer statutory base and wider remit". "From the autumn a new, stronger body will take responsibility for vocational qualifications," she said. "The voice of employers, and the interests of employees will be of vital importance."

The MCI was launching a new set of vocational qualifications, which have been revised in partnership with the National Council for Vocational Qualifications to meet demands for greater transparency following recommendations from the Beaumont review of vocational qualifications.

"I was particularly pleased to learn of the uses business schools have been making of the (vocational) standards within, or alongside, their more traditional, academic qualifications," said Baroness Blackstone. "A number of schools have developed masters degrees based on MCI's senior management standards. Some are enabling students to collect evidence towards an NVQ while working towards an academic qualification."

Business schools involved in the pilot work included Dorset Business School, which integrated the management standards in its MBA programmes, and Greenwich University, which offered NVQ units as part of undergraduate degrees.

Baroness Blackstone also encouraged senior managers to take up NVQs. "There are still hundreds of thousands of managers with no relevant qualifications," she said. "They need to be encouraged to consider taking a management NVQ."