Last year, City & Guilds forged an alliance with two of the largest police forces in the country. One year on, how are West Midlands and Metropolitan probationary police officers faring?

Last year, the Home Office wrote to all police forces in the United Kingdom, recommending that the Level 3 and 4 NVQs in Policing become the national qualification for probationary police officers. Contracts were tendered, and all interested awarding bodies applied.

After a long campaign involving much effort and dedication from members of the Justice and Security team, the Business Unit and Quality team, City & Guilds successfully won an NVQ Policing contract with London Metropolitan and forged an alliance with  the West Midlands Police forces – an achievement in itself, but one which builds upon City & Guilds’ keen interest and concern in vocational qualifications within the justice sector, and a benchmark partnership between an awarding body and the police.

The City & Guilds Policing NVQs are designed to prove that probationary police officers are assessed against a nationally recognised set of standards, ensuring that wherever they are working in the UK they demonstrate the same level of skill and expertise. These NVQs assess the skills that police officers learn in their first two years of duty and include arresting and detaining individuals, preparing case files and interviewing suspects. The NVQs also assess an officer’s communication skills and social awareness of policing activities through units that focus on areas such as fostering people’s equality and diversity, as well as the use of police actions in a fair and justified way.

With the London Metropolitan Police, the NVQ covers its Initial Police Learning and Development Programme (IPLDP), involving around 31,000 officers across 32 boroughs. IPLDP is designed to provide new police officers with training entirely in the force and community where they will be working. It is intended to foster greater community engagement, and to give new officers better understanding of the communities they will be policing. Chris Wall, Group Business Manager in the Business Unit at City & Guilds, says: ‘The Met is the largest and most influential force in the UK. We have to ensure that the quality of that programme is second to none and that it doesn’t detract from the Met’s business needs.’

Tony Clark, Police Inspector with the Met Police, is pleased to be working with City & > Guilds: ‘I am delighted that the Metropolitan Police has selected City & Guilds as the Awarding Body for our IPLDP. This is the first time the Met has offered qualifications as part of our recruit training and we believe that by engaging with City & Guilds, we will benefit from their experience to ensure that our student officers are working towards clearly defined levels of competence.’

With the West Midlands Police, the agreement covers a pilot scheme for their Student Officer Training Programme at level 4. Nicola Davis, the Learning and Development Manager with West Midlands Police, explains the benefits: ‘Piloting the accreditation of the West Midlands Police’s Student Officer Training Programme with the NVQ Level 4 in Policing has enabled the training and assessment of our officers to be benchmarked against national standards that are independently evaluated by City & Guilds. This helps us to improve performance and the service we provide to our communities.’

Furthermore, the achievement of the student officers in successfully completing their probationary period is being recognised with a national qualification. ‘This helps us maintain our position as an employer of choice as well as assisting officers to begin their continual professional development journey,’ says Davis.

City & Guilds’ Chris Wall believes the scheme is highly innovative. ‘West Midlands needed 15 full time assessors and verifiers to deliver the NVQ but they couldn’t be seen to be hiring this number of administrative staff. We have provided them with an alternative assessment strategy, mapping the role of assessor to sergeant and training liaison officers to internal verifier. We’re still in the pilot phase and expect a full evaluation next year but this is very cutting edge.’

Securing these relationships is a clear indication that City & Guilds is serious when it comes to policing, justice and the broader communities concerned. ‘It goes back to our own charter that we are support-heavy at City & Guilds in order to deliver quality programmes,’ says Wall. ‘We’ve got on board 11 other police forces that are delivering the NVQ which means that we qualify 38% of all probationary officers in the UK.’