NVQs
An NVQ is a nationally recognised qualification. It shows that you are able to work to a set national standard.
NVQs reflect ‘best practice’ and are based on National Occupational Standards written by the particular employment-led body that represents your work area. In social care in England, this is Skills for Care.
- National Occupational Standards are written as ‘units of competence’; you gain an NVQ by achieving a set number of ‘units’.
- You achieve units by demonstrating your competence at work. NVQs are gained in the workplace, whether you are employed or on a placement there, not in a classroom or exam hall.
- NVQs require that you have a certain level of background knowledge about your area of work, so you may be able to use college awards (‘qualifications’) as evidence toward the knowledge part of the requirements for the NVQ. Awards that you completed before you registered for your NVQ may be accepted.
- NVQs have five ‘levels’, with level five being the highest. It is a common mistake to think these are “equivalent” to academic levels, but in fact they describe levels of operation at work. The level at which you are expected to work should determine what level of NVQ you need.
- For example, level 1 indicates work that is very highly supervised and requires very little or no individual decision-making. (There is no level 1 in social care, for this reason.) Workers at levels 4 and 5 are relatively unsupervised and will often have supervision of others as part of their task, and frequent responsibility for significant decisions. (These are typically management posts that require a high level of competence.)
E-learning support
For more information about NVQ's and the units required to complete them, please see the Scils website, under the Qualifications tab at the top of the home page. You will need to register with Scils to access these pages. Please make sure you have the permission of your manager before using this.
This page was last updated on 23 October 2007
Bookmark this page using:
Find out more about social bookmarking.
These sites allow you to store, tag and share links across the internet. You can share these links both with friends and people with similar interests. You can also access your links from any computer you happen to be using.
If you come across a page on our site that you find interesting and want to save for future reference or share it with other people, simply click on one of these links to add to your list.
All of these sites are free to use but do require you to register. Once you have registered you can begin bookmarking. Each of the sites works slightly differently so use the links below to find out which service best suits your needs.
Find out more about social bookmarking at Wikipedia.
