There needs to be a mixed approach to police recruitment, South Yorkshire Police Federation has said, as the first force in the country axes its degree requirement.<\/p>\n
This month, Hampshire\u2019s Chief Constable told national newspapers: \u201cI want bobbies on the beat \u2013 not writing essays.\u201d He said that insisting on a degree ruled out many with young families and those with experience \u2013 including ex-military personnel \u2013 who were ready for operational policing.<\/p>\n
The Chair of South Yorkshire Police Federation, Steve Kent, said he agreed with this point, but that it made sense to keep the degree for those who wanted to do it, alongside recruiting those who already had life experience.<\/p>\n
Steve said: \u201cOur Federation\u2019s view has always been that you need to have a mixed system for recruitment into policing because you need to have those people who have life experience, who maybe have come from occupations where going into policing is something that they can absolutely do without a degree.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think a degree makes a good cop. But I also think we need to attract younger people in and offer that skillset. So our view is there needs to be a mixed approach.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got your young people who want to go to university, who we should be grabbing \u2013 making policing an attractive career and training the future leaders. But it\u2019s ridiculous for ex-military, ex-prison officers, ex-public service workers who have already got the skills to be police officers \u2013 they don\u2019t need to sit down and do a degree.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve admitted that there had been a lot of issues with police degrees, including the amount of control that universities held. He said: \u201cThere are concerns about universities, by stealth, deciding what happens to employees. They might say: \u2018If you don\u2019t submit your coursework, we\u2019re kicking you off the course\u2019, which then puts South Yorkshire Police in a position where they are potentially Reg 13ing officers based on what the university\u2019s saying, and that can\u2019t be right. It has to be the organisation that decides the future of its officers.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve continued: \u201cI do have some sympathy with the force, because it has invested heavily in the instruction from Government that everybody will be degree entry. So the force has, in essence, made its own police academy based on that.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow the Government is doing a U-turn, which is fine and we want that longer-term, but it does leave the force in a tricky position where it thinks: \u2018Well, hang on a minute, how much are we now going to have to spend on resources to change our system?\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo this is welcome, but it\u2019s also frustrating that what we have been saying for some time has come out in this rushed way. The Government should be financially supporting forces to make this transition back to a mixed system.\u201d<\/p>\n