This week (23 June), people across the UK will be celebrating national VQ day, which was launched in 2008 to raise the stature of practical and vocational learning and celebrate vocational achievement.

NVQ language courses have recently been proving very popular with teachers and learners alike because of their vocational nature.  Learners like the fact that they learn work-relevant language within work-related contexts, that they can see themselves using in their future lives. 

Here at CILT, we are currently involved in some important activity regarding NVQs, tying in with the changes to the National Occupational Standards, which will apply from September 2010 onwards.

To raise awareness of these changes, and to demonstrate how they are transferred into qualifications on the new Qualifications and Credit Framework, we ran a very successful (and over-subscribed!) event last week here in our offices. The event considered the new Standards and how they differ to existing ones, the new Qualifications and Credit Framework and how languages fit in to this, how to register as a centre and set up an NVQ course, and how to get assessor and verifier training. There was also advice from the awarding bodies, including one to one surgeries with them.

As a result of the interest being shown in NVQs, a further event has been organised for 20^th July at the CILT offices in London, and people are being encouraged to sign up as early as possible in order to secure a space.  You can find out more information here.