Policy & Practice: Briefing - Framework maze needs to be navigated

Six reports? Should I read them all?

The implications in this area are potentially huge, but you're probably not going to get much out of these unless it's a big part of your job.

The majority of us may be satisfied in knowing that progress in creating an integrated qualifications framework that will maximise flexibility and mobility across the whole children and young people's workforce is going to be very complicated indeed.

Why? Well take this example. Half-way through one of this series of reports comes the statement that the study "tried to identify significant qualifications" for each occupation. You'd have thought that was a fairly basic step when trying to map qualifications. But, say the researchers, "in practice this proved almost impossible". In some professions there is a clearly defined "gatekeeping" qualification, but elsewhere the impression given is of an unregulated Wild West of qualifications. "I have given up trying to work out how one qualification relates to another," states one head of family support about the situation in early years. "Almost every application form turns up a qualification we haven't come across before."