The new standards – all of them developed in close partnership with leading sector employers – will now join the Cash-and-Valuables-in-Transit and security dog handling benchmarks (approved in January) on the National Occupational Standards Directory.
In tandem with this, Skills for Security has also been hard at work with the Security Industry Authority (SIA)-endorsed (and QCA-appointed) National Open College Network (NOCN) on the Level 2 Certificate for Security Practitioners – to the extent that the first 170 successful candidates have just passed the industry pilot scheme run over the past 12 months in conjunction with G4S Security Services (UK), Securitas Security Services, The Corps, VSG and Wilson James.
Skills for Security’s standards development manager Ruth Oliver deserves much praise for her efforts, so too the enthusiastic sector employer expert groups with whom she has been in constant liaison. In light of this, let us not underestimate Skills for Security’s contribution to the National Standards Directory, which is now hugely significant. The new standards are also essential to Skills’ ongoing plans for The Register of Security Professionals, which the organisation intends to launch alongside The Security Institute at next month’s IFSEC Exhibition.
One of the key objectives for the SIA is, of course, to raise standards across the industry and deliver significant improvements to those relying on the sector’s degree of quality and professionalism. These standards will be a determining factor along the road to that achievement.
According to Stefan Hay – Skills for Security’s director of business development and communications – “there is a collective belief that the Certificate for Security Practitioners heralds the future for qualifications in this sector.”
The very fact that the qualification exists is a tremendous tribute to the remarkable three-way collaboration between Skills for Security, the NOCN and industry employers, all of whom have pushed so hard to first put it in place and then to gain national Learning and Skills Council funding.
Skills for Security is really beginning to make its mark.