What is Occupational Competence?

If you look at any course specification you will see the same phase repeated. The tutor or assessor delivering the qualification must be occupationally competent. But what exactly is occupational competence and how do you demonstrate it?  To help you better understand this requirement we’ll answer the following questions.

What is occupational competence?

How can you evidence your occupational competence?

By answering these two questions you will begin to see that things are not quite as straightforward as you might think.

What is occupational competence?

For educational purposes, occupational competence is defined as;

‘Having sufficient knowledge and understanding of the occupation to be able to make sound, valid and quantifiable judgements about a learner’s knowledge, skills and understanding of the task they are being assessed on.’

So let’s put this into plain English. You must have sufficient knowledge and understanding of the occupation to know when your learners are doing the task right or wrong. So a bricklayer would not be occupationally competent to assess a dental nurse and vice versa.

That does however give us a new problem. What constitutes sufficient knowledge and understanding? This brings us nicely to our next question.

How can you evidence your occupational competence?

To be able to evidence your occupational competence you need to be able to demonstrate sufficient knowledge and understanding of the occupation you are assessing. Fundamentally this can be evidenced in one of two ways.

1)      Through Relevant Work experience

This is by far the best form of occupational competence you can demonstrate. A minimum of two years of work experience in that occupation, doing the same or a similar job, is considered a sufficient length of time to demonstrate occupational competence. However, it is worth checking whether your training provider or employer is looking for a longer work period. We say this because we have seen a few job advertisements asking for at least five years of relevant work experience.

2)     Through holding appropriate Vocational qualifications

Vocational qualifications are also accepted as a means of demonstrating occupational competence because they contain a mixture of both theory and practice. A purely academic qualification does not have this. Usually, they need to be at level 3 or above but this does vary between specifications and employers.

 

By having either of the above you will have demonstrated sufficient knowledge and understanding and therefore by definition occupational competence. But our story does not stop there. The reason is some employers are asking for both. It is not uncommon to see the following in job advertisements.

“The successful applicant will have at least two years experience in ****** and hold a ******* qualification at level 3 or above”

So hopefully now you appreciate all they are asking is that you are occupationally competent.