I looked and looked, and still found no evidence that in order for a person, company or organisation to offer any sort of first aid training aimed at those persons in the workplace, that it is a legal requirement to have some sort of registration with OFQUAL. I have confirmed that to become an Awarding Organisation, it costs over £100,000. Awarding organisations cannot teach to avoid a conflict of interest. So, nobody who teaches will become an AO. Apparently registering with an AO in order to be able to display the OFQUAL logo will cost £100. It would seem that to get their money back, an AO would need to sign up 1000 applicants. Well, that is not going to happen, so they will have to find other ways to bleed an income out of them. Selling certificates would be one way of doing it - but hey, its been done for years. Once you have paid your £1700 to the HSE, you can authorise absolutely anyone you have never met to teach under your registration.

The suggestion is that once HSE finally disappear off the scene, then it will be necessary on pain of prosecution to register with an OFQUAL AO, otherwise bad things will happen, and your first aid training is meaningless, worthless and not worth the paper your certificates are printed on.

Well, this is quite simply not the case. It is scaremongering, and it is being propagated by those who have already spent the £100,000. OFQUAL exist to perform functions as laid down in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. If I were an AO, I could offer an OFQUAL approved course in underwater dominos and suggest that any other courses in underwater dominos are substandard, and if I were very cynical, would suggest that the competition and anyone not "registered" are acting illegally.

There is a very useful guidance note I found in relation to this and it seems to be summed up in 3 questions;

Q. Should I become an Ofqual Awarding Organisation?
A. No, Approval costs us approx £100,000 in resources and software. More importantly, Awarding Organisations cannot train or at least must manage the conflict of interest (Gamekeeper & Poacher scenario), by say forming another company. We are lucky in that we do not do training so there’s not a conflict; (likewise we are not in competition with our members!).

Q. Should I become a Training Centre of an Ofqual Awarding Organisation?
A. In a single word, Yes. Centre approval brings status, quality and enable you to offer a range of relevant qualifications. More importantly, it gives your customer confidence in knowing that they are using a regulated, quality training provider.

Q. Is it difficult or expensive to become a Centre?
A. No, it is not difficult or expensive. We (AoFAQ) will help you every step of the way. Centre approval costs effectively just £100 including lesson plans, PowerPoints etc.

That guidance note is found here; http://www.aofa.org/News...sletter.asp?article=132

So, if you desire the approval of an organisation that has paid out £100k, and invoke the "status" of the others who have also paid £100 so you can all teach from lesson plans and power points written by someone else, then fill your boots. It would be most helpful if the particular AO who also controls this site fulfills its obligations to "manage the conflict of interest (Gamekeeper & Poacher scenario) and who have formed and control other companies, and be honest about the fact, or at least clear up the misconception that once HSE FAAMS has been consigned to the bonfire of the quangos, that there is NO legal requirement whatsoever to register with an OFQUAL Awarding Organisation in order to carry on with the business of, or continue to carry on with the business of teaching first aid courses aimed, intended or tailored to those who will use those skills in the workplace, in accordance with the training requirements identified by their employer carrying out their statutory duties to provide such training after a suitable risk assessment.

Others fail to get the concept of proportionalism, necessity and the needless regulation of things that do not need regulating. I also noted in a previous posting that you beileve people ought to view any recommendation as a statutory requirement. This then leads to none statutory bodies believing amongst themselves that that any recommendation they make is a statutory requirement. This then filters down through webistes like this, and all of a sudden people start believing that anything said by these organisations is the law of the land. Change - some people question it, others follow blindly for fear of being seen as a dissenter.

I've kept out of this one until now but I can't resist any longer.



For those who fear change - well that's natural.  For those that embrace change - good for you - you'll probably come out best in the end.



Lofstedt will happen.  Those who cling to the belief that if they shout, stamp thier little feet and cry loudly enough that it won't, are, frankly, not living on the same planet as the rest of us.  It's OK to be scared of change, it is really, the trick is to embrace it.



How you do that is, largely up to you.  You have essentially two options;



1) Decide you can 'do it' alone, or

2) Become a centre for an awarding body.



Be warned..... once Lofstedt is implimented every man, jack and his dog will be jumping on the FA training band wagon.  You then have another dilema.....



If you've chosen option 1, how do you readily identify yourself in the eyes of a potentail customer, with more choice than they know what to do with, as a quality training provider - remember you won't have the HSE logo to fall back on. 

Naturally (with my AoFA/AoFAQ hat on) it would seem that being able to cite "My training Company is an approved centre for {insert name of AO}, an Ofqual Awarding Organisation" is better than "My training company is really great, honest".....and yes I know I'm over simplifying.



I know Ofqual is a quango but then, in the strictest sense of the word, so is the HSE.  Ofqual have statutory enforcement and (for that matter) fining powers; will they ever use them?  Who knows.  The HSE had the same power and they never did - well not in the FA training arena anyway.



Please don't become fretful over price.  Add the cost of your AO cert to the cost of the course per candidate.  Don't think of it as an increase, up sell.  That is...say to your client "and for an extra £? you can have an internationally recognised certificate which is endoresed by Ofqual".  They'll say "oh...right" in a vague sort of way and assume that Ofqual are something to do with regulation - after all everything is 'Off' something...Ofwat, Ofgas, Ofstead...



I don't quite think that "and for £? you get a certifcate which is endoresed by me" has quite the same ring to it.



Essentially people, it's up to you.  I know which way I would go but then I would say that, wouldn't I?

So that'll be the same for HPC paramedics and RGN's and members of the GMC, will it?

Anne

I don't think you should dismiss the extra cost of paying a third party for the privilege of issuing a certificate so lightly. It will not be a case of "upselling". If I understand correctly, some of the rationale behind commissioning the Lofsted thing was about easing pressures, presumably financial due to the recession, from employers. So as a result of an exercise to make it cheaper, they now will have to pay more? We would have to pay, say, £5 per certificate, so a course for 12 x EFAW adds £60 plus VAT if passed on to the employer. Not all employers are VAT reclaimers, so this will be an extra £72.

Could we afford to absorb this extra cost ourselves? No. Like (I suspect) many on here, we have not lifted prices for five years because we are competing locally against people who do first aid training as a "second job" and without the overheads; people who are charging peanuts just to get some work (read some of the threads from earlier this year).

So I tell my customers I am going to join a club that has Ofqal behind it. When they ask what extra they will derive from the extra money, will they be happy that I can assure them that as an Ofqual backed body, my policy on Discrimination has been inspected, my paperwork, although having escalated, is in perfect order, my staff grievance policy is confirmed as suitable? For many employers, "sorting out the first aid" is a tiresome job but it has to be done (although there are thousands of employers that don't bother at all - after all, how likely is it they will be found out by the HSE bogeyman?). So employers want it sorted at the cheapest price they can get for training that doesn't give them too many complaints from the staff. I mentioned before the local authority doing its own evaluations because of dissatisfaction with HSE's standards, but even this exercise was only triggered after several years of continued complaints from the candidates about the poor standards of training.

So I say again, I believe that our principal customers will not be looking for an Ofqal backed body unless it becomes mandatory. Hence, as I said earlier, it will not be a case of upselling - without compulsion I suspect they will have no more faith in an Ofqal backed AO than they did the HSE.

Which reminds me - although I signed on the dotted line, I may have beem mis-sold PPI as I was told I needed it so apparently I'm entitled to a refund.............

Marmite, I am not disparaging people I disagree with. I have an issue when people are being led down the garden path through the power of suggestion or downright deliberate misinformation, whichever it is, and whoever it is from, that there is to be a compulsary and lawful requirement to register with OFQUAL or similar in order to carry on busiess after the recognition of the failure and futility of the FAAMS resulting in their eviction from their office whilst the process of making the staff redundant or redeploying them takes place. It was still only a month or so ago they were trying to squeeze their last away days in by trying to arrange monitoring visits at 500 notes a time.

All that has happened here is that an organisation that was set up to regulate and monitor proper qualifications in schools and colleges has, through a process of getting way too big for its own boots, gone through a period of missions creep and started poking its nose into other "qualifications" and started calling things Level 2 in this and level 3 in that.

My personal viewpoint, and its only a personal one, is that as a large and relevant organisation that had strong ties with FAAMS, and I imagine that the soon to be redundant staff will have already applied for positions within these awarding bodies, you have in some way been swept up with the tide, or indeed misinformed yourself that the one organisation has been replaced by another. Indeed, and by your own admission, it has taken up vast amounts of time, was hugely expensive and very stressful personally. OFQUAL now have £100,000 of your money, which was raised from your membership. Me, I would have extolled the virtues of membership of a professional and knowledgable trade body, ie AOFA, set up a system of voluntary and robust regulation, education - both continuous and previous, and told OFQUAL to stick it because they, along with the others, award certificates to people who have attended hopelessly inadequate courses run by sausage factories - the SIA one is just an example that I have experienced personally. My HABC SIA certificate in no way makes me competent, the course delivery was appalling, the instructors were cowboys, course content did not address many of the exam questions and people who could barely speak English, some of whom went on to be employed at the Olympics by G4S still managed to secure a pass. The first aid course certificate that HABC would also have issued had I not dobbed them in would have been similarly worthless, having been delivered by someone who knew nothing of his subject, and had no resus dolls with him.

If it looks like people are being conned, I will say so. I can't help thinking that the AOFA have been conned because you cannot see the wood for the trees - hence I raised the comparison of being mis-sold PPI with a loan etc. I have however experienced a HABC course, HABC companies, HABC instructors and have a HABC certificate - and it is not worth the paper it is printed on yet still guaranteed a registration with the Security Industry Authority which is supposed to be an indicator of competence and compliance. We all know from recent news that this most definately not the case, and now there will be a clamour between hugely expensive Awarding Bodies as to which one is the best. What next, a new quango to regulate the regulators?

I'll keep my money thanks, and they can keep out of my business. I can hold my own against the competition who will claim to be better just because they have tangoed with a quango because I can prove that membership of one of these clubs in no way guarantees competence.

Its here Bingers old bean http://www.aofa.org/News...sletter.asp?article=132

It does get a little confusing with there being degrees of separation between FAC, AOFA, AOFAQ etc, but that was written under the auspices of AOFA, citing that getting approval cost £100k. I can't tell you on what it was spent, or how it was spent, but a key player in AOFA says it was spent in pursuit of becoming an OFQUAL approved centre so perhaps they would be so kind as to explain as it does seem to be an enormous and prohibitve amount of money bordering on the obscene and quite typical of a QUANGO who bleed dry and sponge up in equal measures. If you have spent this money, and someone else can carry on business and compete with you effectively and not be a member of any club, then its pointless. In fact, it is about as pointless as the martial arts "licences" the various clubs and disciplines sell their members. In law, it means nothing but it is sold as something that it is not and some people are taken in by it - see the Frank Warren thing where he was threatened by the British Boxing Board of Control for organising an "unlicenced" fight between Haye and Chisora. All a BBBC licence means is that money (lots of it) is spent to keep some good old boys in dinner suits and 1987 Jaguars, and in return they have a few rules about medical provision, HIV/Hep testing and Brain Scans. Same as the Football Association once trying to prevent a kids game from going ahead because it was two teams of girls. They have no power at all, but they like to think they have!

Ah yes, found it:



"Q. Should I become an Ofqual Awarding Organisation?

A. No, Approval costs us approx £100,000 in resources and software."



Doesn't look like a fee payable to Ofqual to me.  Still, mustn't let the facts get in the way of a good story.

Heaven forbid that anyone were to present anything that is at varience with your view of the world.  Anyone might think you had also thrown money at this as well............