Somewhat of a milestone was reached at the CAI’s annual trade fair this year. After the ‘millstone’ that seemed to be achieved previously, the CAI finally came to an agreement with the government’s licensing body – the RDI – and both organisations stood side by side on the conference platform.
Any misunderstanding of aims and objectives, power posturing or positioning have now been put aside and I stood alongside Martin Smith – the RDI’s Managing Director – at our trade fair, aptly named ‘Beyond the Switch’.
Last autumn saw the start of friendly, but intense negotiation, between Martin and myself to establish Martin’s vision of the UK’s only trade body establishing a pathway exclusively for its members to achieve ‘digital tick status’. The basis of this deal and the masterful bit was that the RDI would be stepping sideways as the objective – i.e. an ‘RDI licence’ – to be purely the licence provider. The digital tick ID card would be the target and the digital tick the flag to be waved once you had run the course and jumped through the hoops.
Contrary to popular belief at the time, the CAI had never really objected to a licensing scheme. Without wishing to open old wounds – and hindsight is wonderful thing – I think we would have started from a different point had licensing been the objective first dreamt up. It wasn’t, the NVQ was the love-child of CAI and ASTRA liaison many years ago when I first took on the role of CAI inspector in the early 1990’s. ASTRA’s Bill Collins and I emerged one evening from a Parliamentary All Party Meeting in Westminster and pondered on; ‘what this industry needs is an NVQ’ – to quote the ever-wise Mr Collins.
Bill and I achieved our ‘big wish’ and some painful12 years later a Signal Reception pathway to an NVQ level 2 emerged on the certificate listings of City & Guilds and the then named EMTA (later to become the skills sector council, SEMTA). It felt like it would have been easier to raise the Titanic. Only an British education system can make things this hard to do. However, it is here and we are stuck with it until someone has a better plan.
The conduit for the ‘tick’ would be the CAI’s Education & Skills process and the CAI would feed applicants into a NVQ Level 2 via a college provider. Once an NVQ is achieved the holder presents this back to the CAI for digital tick accreditation and the issue of a licence ID card.
Article by Tim Jenks, CAI staff.
