Accreditation Culture & Ticking Boxes

April 28th, 2008 by mas | Filed under Education & Skills, Resources.

When putting together a training course I try to adapt the resources and the different training activities to suit the needs of the people/organisation that has commissioned the training. Obviously the first this is done its very time consuming, and then over time it becomes easier as you have more ideas and experiences to draw on - but you still have to ask the same question before putting together each programme - “what do people want to achieve and how can we best help them do it?”

What bothers me with the ‘accreditation culture’ is that the thinking can be shifted from what do people need? to how do I get them to tick the boxes? And providing ways to help people realise which boxes to tick isn’t going to encourage more consideration to the former - hence I have one less thing on my todo list!

Thinking about this reminded me of some work we did with a school using the International Baccalaureate. We were working with some students at the start of their school year and at the beginning of their studies one of the things they had to do was to choose themselves how they were going to demonstrate to their teachers that they had gained the necessary understanding of their subject - so instead of the teacher issuing out an assignment or an exam, the students chose their own manner of assessment. I much prefer the idea of young people being able to choose their own method of assessment - not because it makes things easy, it shouldn’t! But because arguably its fairer and more relevant to real life - afterall if you get asked to do a pitch in your employment do you choose to do so using a method you’re not good at, or using one that helps you get your point across the best?

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    I just visited a school in South London that had an interesting take on their citizenship course for Year 10s - they have to accredit/ mark the students for activee citizenship so they have come up with a structure (that students agree with) that doesn't do the tick boxes thing but recognises going above and beyond basic engagement - they are only trying out now so only time will tell if it really works (will let you know at the end of the summer!)
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    Interesting thoughts, however there's no real getting away from the fact that one of the targets against which we are measured as an LA is the numbers of young people gaining accreditation.

    I wholeheartedly agree with the fact we should be focussing on the young person and what they are trying to acheive, and the idea of them setting their own targets and challenges does cross over into a lot of methods for accrediting their work, in particular the Youth Acheivement Awards (although I have my own issues with this which I'll talk about at some point on my blog).

    I am also in agreement with the tick box culture that the targets can generate. However for me the biggest issue is when our own attitudes, ethics, morals or lack of understanding then impact on young people. (....I'm not directing this at you personally, honest!)

    For most of the work I see accreditation can complement and not dictate the work being undertaken. In our area I get frustrated seeing acitivities or programmes of work where, with very little alteration and planning ahead the young person could get some form of formal recognition of what they are doing. Surely this can only add benefit to the young person? I spend a lot of time showing staff how this can be the case and also suggesting what methods of accreditation are more suited to what activities.
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    Hi Hilary - I don't disagree with any of what you say. I too work on the basis of encouraging groups to use their experiences with us to gain appropriate recognition/certificates/accreditations and I certainly agree with the principle of 'if you can get it then you may as well' - several of the courses we used to run in the Young Movers programme took advantage of things like the John Muir Awards, many groups did use Youth Achievement Awards and we even used OCN accreditation for a few courses.

    I have however avoided taking our own training down the accreditation route, primarily for 2 reasons -
    1. I haven't yet found an appropriate accreditation that fits for work with young people from 11+ and that doesn't require us to significantly change our approach
    2. Whatever the award schemes claim there is inevitably a lot of paperwork (sometimes slightly disguised) for participants - this eats into the limited time we have available and also annoys most participants - we have certainly never yet been asked for 'more paperwork' and I think this is very understandable given that young people do these activities in their spare time.

    I think I've referred to this incident before on here, but an example of accreditation in practice is a group we do a lot of work with in Bolton. The leader got so frustrated at the amount of certificates she was distributing to members that she asked some of them if they even knew why they had achieved those certificates - the response was a shrug.

    My overall personal opinion is that there are real questions about the value of the accreditations in use. When you step out of the youth work sector and start mentioning OCN units, ASDAN awards, Youth Achievement Awards, you generally draw blank looks - they are not things that people recognise in the way that they do GCSE's, or A Levels etc. So when I hear young people being told how great it is that they will get a 'qualification', or a certificate etc. I wonder how much of this is misleading - how many young people think they're gaining something really useful when in fact at the time they come to present this towards a job application it will count for very little? Add to that the time & cost in bureaucracy to administrate and I think there has to be questions about the value of this as an approach.

    What I'd rather see is much more pressure being put on the national curriculum to recognise and take into account what young people achieve outside of formal education and for this to count towards things like Citizenship - so that their efforts can be useful towards a recognised formal accreditation that people will value and understand. Obviously no easy task - but then neither is the current approach and if that energy and related resources could be channeled differently I think perhaps it would have more value for young people and also for the youth sector which in my opinion should be working towards a close relationship with the formal education world.

    I take your point about peoples own values/misunderstanding impacting on young people etc. but of course this works in other ways too - in contrast to my own stance on this I have seen many who are so tied up with accreditation that the work they do loses its appeal to the young people they work with. Another relevant point is that from the Young Movers programme we had researchers following the programme for 2 years, our senior volunteers were also interviewed by a National Youth Agency programme who directly asked the volunteers if they wanted certificates and if they felt certificates were important - the responses were a resounding 'no' - not in a negative way, just that they had never considered this as important.

    What they did consider important was the experiences they had had, and were having. Several of these have credited success in interviews and applications to having had this experience - its what they did with us that they talked about during their interview. This is the thing I'm most working on at the moment - trying to explore was to support young people to value these kinds of experiences so that they can talk confidently and interestingly about who they are and what they've done. Good accreditation schemes can support this - but I'm interested in exploring alternative ways of supporting it because I don't think its the piece of paper thats important - its the experiences that create the conversation and confidence.

    lol I was saving most of this for a future blog! Look forward to reading your thoughts about Youth Achievement Awards because I was very excited about those when they began but very disappointed when I attended a seminar about what they were (some years ago admittedly).
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    WoW! Didn't expect to illicit quite such a response! Again, I don't disagree with any of what you have written. Like you I have found the emphasis of so many of the accreditation schemes on paperwork and portfolio building very frustrating and difficult to engage with. I also agree that it's the experience and the ability / confidence and understanding to articulate this that counts.

    As to the value and worth of the qualifications outside of the youth sector - hmm, I need time to think this one over more although I do think that there should be more links and opportunities to link with the National Curriculum.....particularly for those young people who struggle in this area.

    Lots to think about here and wil try to get my thoughts down soon.

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