National and Scottish vocational qualifications: the implications for engineering institutions and higher education

In recognition of the need to enhance the competence of the UK workforce, new national vocational qualifications (NVQs), and occupational standards on which they are based, are being developed. The paper describes the role of the Engineering Occupations Standards Groups and its four Industry Standing Conferences in the engineering sector and proposes the need for the participation of engineering institutions and further and higher education in assembling NVQs and SVQs from the standards and in the process of identifying the knowledge and understanding that is required to underpin them