John, I am also at arms length at the moment.
However, I recently attended a Seta workshop and was alarmed by some comments I heard regarding the status of the replacement qualifications & the turnaround time from the QCTO. I have not taken it up at this stage.
I believe that the professional bodies – and all the departments contributing directly to the economy should be paying attention to the potential economic impact when employees cannot be trained because new appropriate qualifications and skills programmes do not exist.
There are also the implications of requiring essential skills programmes to comprise a credit limit to be registered. Therefore, irrelevant components are added to meet the requirements, resulting in additional cost, and time away from productive work.
Occupational training is by definition for the workplace.