Competences FAQ

What are Competences?
National Occupational Standards (NOS) and National Workforce Competences (NWC) describe performance as outcomes of a person's work. They focus on what the person needs to be able to do, as well as what they must know and understand to work effectively.

NOS and NWC are designed to allow people to assess and be assessed against them. In order to do that, NOS and NWC must be:

•     a single task
•     able to be undertaken by one individual
•     measurable
•     observable

National Occupational Standards (NOS) are used across the four countries; England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. National Workforce Competences (NWC) sit alongside NOS and are the specific additional competences that have been developed for the healthcare sector. They define what has to be done not who does it.

They describe:

•     what the required standard is for a particular activity
•     the performance criteria against which competence can be assessed
•     the underpinning knowledge that is needed.

Essentially, they are the same. Competences are classified as NWC or NOS and have the same quality assurance process. The only difference are the way they are funded and that NOS have gone through an additional approval stage through the United Kingdom Coordinating Group and that they are approved for use in Scottish and National Vocational Qualifications (SNVQ).

Competences are a tool to help individuals, organisations and training providers to improve performance. They are useful for carrying out a wide range of activities. Examples can be found in the next three FAQs.

Competences can be used by individuals to:

• Create a checklist to measure your own performance
• Identify professional development needs and to help career progression
• Accumulate evidence that may lead to a nationally recognised qualification

• Design fair and transparent recruitment and selection procedures
• Design job descriptions, advertisements and interview questions
• Design induction programmes and information packs
• Carry out appraisals
• Identify individual or team learning needs.

• Make programmes more relevant to people's needs
• Provide clear goals for structured learning
• Design tailored training packages and assess relevance and effectiveness
• Define learning outcomes

In addition, National Occupational Standards (NOS) are also used to inform the content of vocational qualifications.

They generally contain two key components, one that relates to the individual's performance, and one that relates to what the individual must know and understand.

Each competence is currently written in a set format which includes:

•     Title - active tense with a range of context/conditions
•     Scope/overview - further defines range
•     Performance criteria - measures of successful performance (how well must it be done)
•     Underpinning knowledge and understanding - academic basis.

Competences can be grouped together into frameworks. They can be specifically relevant to a particular condition, or they can be grouped in other ways, such as qualification or role.

The template used by Skills for Health for presenting competences has evolved over the years and is reviewed and updated based on continuing evaluation.

Skills for Health has lead responsibility for developing competences for the health sector. We work collaboratively with the relevant stakeholders, practitioners and experts to write the competences. This work is usually carried out as a project with a Strategy Group, Reference Group and Project Executive Group in place to support progress.

Once National Occupational Standards (NOS) have been agreed through the internal Skills for Health process and have met the agreed criteria set down by the United Kingdom Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), they are submitted to the United Kingdom Coordinating Group who is responsible for approving all Sector Skills Councils' NOS.

As competences do not have an accreditation end date, they are reviewed by Skills for Health on a project basis.

The competences could be reviewed because:

•     They are used to develop units within a Scottish and National Vocational Qualifications (SNVQ). The competences will be reviewed as part of the review of the qualification. This normally occurs every three years.
•     Feedback has been received that a competence no longer reflects current practice.
•     Where the competence is identified as being part of the 'scope' of a new project the National Reference Group may decide that the National Occupational Standards (NOS) needs to be updated.

When feedback is received Skills for Health will follow a 'risk assessment' procedure in all instances to identify what action the competence feedback requires.

Competences set out the performance criteria (what the person must do) and underpinning knowledge and understanding required to undertake that particular function.

Assessment for qualifications
When National Occupational Standards (NOS) are used in an Scottish and National Vocational Qualifications (SNVQ) there is an associated assessment strategy that will set out how the learner should be assessed, the evidence that can be collected for a particular unit and the experience and qualifications required by the assessor.
When competences are used to inform the content of other types of qualifications the assessment strategy will assess the learner in the way that is most appropriate for that unit or qualification.

Assessment outside qualification
Although assessment is not essential in these cases, it would be good practice to use similar methods so that evidence is collected to demonstrate competence.
 

Everyone who works within the health sector, from a hospital porter to a senior medical specialist. They also apply outside the NHS, covering independent organisations and voluntary bodies

No, a competence is a single function that defines the task. Some can be applied to roles at different levels and across professions in a Career Framework, whilst others describe functions that can only be undertaken by people at certain levels and in particular roles.

No, National Occupational Standards (NOS) are used to create the units within an S/NVQ. These qualifications also require accompanying evidence requirements and assessment strategies for competence to be assessed.

No, but using competences is recommended good practice by Skills for Health and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills.

Although National Occupational Standards (NOS) and National Workforce Competences (NWC) are not mandatory to any NHS workforce groups apart from those undertaking Scottish and National Vocational Qualifications (SNVQ), they do represent best practice and are therefore useful to have.

They are relevant to the whole of the UK and apply to the healthcare sector in its entirety, rather than exclusively to the NHS. All the competences in our database are mapped against and indicatively linked NHS KSF Dimensions. Evidence used to demonstrate competence against Skills for Health competence can also be used to demonstrate how you meet your NHS KSF profile.

A functional map is created in the scoping stage of any competence project in order for the project to clearly identify the functions undertaken by a role/area for which the competences are going to be used.

Skills for Health has developed a Health Functional map to describe the various functions undertaken in the health sector.

National Occupational Standards (NOS) and National Workforce Competences (NWC) have previously been developed as part of specific projects aimed to address the requirements of particular service areas such as Diabetes or Mental Health, or specific service disciplines such as Healthcare Science and Health Informatics.

Skills For Health’s NOS have not been developed to address individual job roles, but are developed according to the function required for a particular activity. Therefore, anyone mapping NOS to their own job role would need to look in more than one suite as many relevant NOS will sit in other "generic" suites: Clinical Health Skills, General Health Care and Health and Safety.

When looking at our NOS, you may see some duplication.  The performance criteria of a number of NOS may sometimes be duplicated when there are close links between the subject-matter of a number of NOS, or when the ‘closing down' activities of one NOS effectively become the ‘starting point' for another.  There may also be duplication within the Knowledge and Understanding statements where underpinning knowledge inevitably applies to more than one NOS.  The reason for including the statement in each NOS is because each one must stand alone so that it is available for use in combination with any other NOS.