Training partner - May 21

COVID HAS provided much personal and business disruption and looks like it is with us for a bit longer. For training and education back in the early days of COVID, over a year ago now but it does seem longer, most things were put on hold - exams, classroom training, awarding body syllabus updates etc. Over the year some of these were resurrected, then quickly paused again as the next wave hit. 

The immediate focus for many training providers was move training online, with virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom being some of the lucky companies that really benefited from COVID.  I know how much effort RRC put into this, you can't just lecture online for days on end; your learners would quickly tire and lose interest. 

Extrapolating this out to the other organisations in the HSE training business there must have been a massive investment to make this happen in what would have previously been seen as impossibly short time frames. Credit must go to all the organisations that rose to the challenge and met the needs of their learners. From my perspective, what is pleasing is how well the tutors and learners have adapted to the new normal of virtual classes and how few problems arose from such rushed developments. There is more that can be done with technology and as things settle down I am sure there will be more innovation leading to even better virtual delivery.

Traditional venue based exams also provided a major challenge, and NEBOSH took the brave step of starting to move away from their traditional assessment methodologies, rapidly introducing their “Open Book Exam” (OBE) for their most popular certificate courses. The terminology they used, “OBE”, rather hides the radical change in the assessment methodology and has caused some disquiet for a few who do not read beyond the headlines. The new assessment is case study based and far better tests the learners understanding and application of the knowledge gained. No more learning answers to questions or just remembering facts, a deep and meaningful understanding is now required. create challenges to those delivering these courses, with significant changes required to the course structure and delivery plus the new administration systems to manage it. But again, credit to NEBOSH and their Learning Partners who made this happen amongst everything else that was going on. 2021 sees the roll out of this assessment methodology to more NEBOSH courses, further reducing the need for learners to attend exams in person.

Just as we think we can sit back and relax the postponed new NEBOSH syllabi appears, again radical change and the short time scales are the New Normal it seems. The problem for a provider of learning relying on assessment by a third party is we have no control of when these changes happen and given learners are in the process of studying the current syllabi for these courses there is very rarely a clean transition. Both the new NEBOSH Fire and Construction Certificate Syllabi are far better focused with updated content and more importantly removing the content that did not add value to the learner. I noted one provider promoting them as “Shorter and Cheaper” which really misses the point; they are fit for purpose, providing the knowledge needed and not the erroneous content that arose from sharing units with other NEBOSH qualifications. Assessment methodologies have been tailored to the specific requirements of the course and do not require exam attendance. So, again, real innovation moving from rigid models to specific qualifications that meet the needs of the learners. 

COVID has in the small world of HSE training forced an incredible amount of innovation and investment in an impossibly short timescale. While I do not like to praise my competitors or our Awarding Bodies, both bring grief at times, all involved have done an incredible job not just muddling through but improving what is taught, how it is assessed and making learning and assessment far more accessible. Yes there has been a lot more grey hairs as a result but ultimately the HSE training market will be better served. 

Gary Fallaize is managing director at RRC. For more information, visit www.rrc.co.uk