College: Turn your experience into academic certificates

A DIRECTORY showing officers and staff how to convert their on-the-job experience into academic certificates will be launched by the College of Policing this summer.

The Recognised Prior Experience and Learning Directory will help officers build academic credits that can be used towards a qualification.

The College is planning a national set of qualifications for officers, from a PC degree apprenticeship and a pre-joining policing degree to a postgraduate certificate for inspectors and a master’s apprenticeship for superintendents.

A spokesman for the College said: “Many officers and staff who provide an excellent service throughout their policing career and develop high-level skills and competencies leave with very little to show for it in terms of externally recognised and transferable qualifications.

“The directory proposal introduces a means for serving officers and staff to gain accreditation for previous learning and experience in the form of academic credits that could be used as recognised prior learning, to a nationally consistent level, toward academic qualifications.”

He told Police Oracle that work had already begun on the directory and that the College is working to develop a nationally agreed matrix of credit values for learning programmes with the National Policing Curriculum.

“The College will also initiate further work to explore funding opportunities to support those in the existing workforce who choose to achieve these qualifications,” he said.

The qualifications will not be compulsory for officers. Chief Constable Alex Marshall, CEO of the College, has previously said that he wants to preserve the police service’s accessibility as a vocational career for people from all backgrounds, but said he also wants to ensure that the increasingly complex activities undertaken by officers are “properly recognised”.