Skills Academy pilots Gold Standard

London - UK process companies will be able to assess their own training and qualifications against a new "Gold Standard" under a new scheme being piloted by the National Skills Academy Process Industries (NSAPI). The Assessment System for Employer Training (ASET) programme is part of the Skills Academy’s remit to help employers address skills shortages in the process sector.

According to the Skills Academy, it is now working with a small group of employers and relevant awarding bodies to develop a practical framework through which skills development can be measured against an industry standard, rather than those of individual employers. The ASET programme is set to run until Autumn 2008.

Industry research shows that many process industries employers are likely to have existing staff training programmes in place that already meet the assessment standards of the Gold Standard qualifications, according to NSAPI. The pilot, it said, is likely to show that a large proportion of employees will already be eligible for accreditation of prior learning assessment.

“This pilot will show just how much they will benefit, individually and as an industry, from involvement with the ASET programme," said Liz Rooney, the Skills Academy’s skills development manager, who is leading the ASET project.  “This will be a UK-wide assessment of current training and skills levels, and will clearly show where our employers are now, and what measures they need to put in place in order to get where they want to be in terms of skills levels and their transferability.

Rooney believes that a significant proportion of the process industry skills gap is due to employers lacking an industrywide, support framework for their existing training, or a method of measuring its value: "We know employers have both the will and the workforce, but up to now there has been no real recognition or measurement tools made available to them."