EAG@IOE: Should students be expected to master the vocational curriculum?

Since the 1970s, vocational qualifications in England have increasingly been specified in terms of comprehensive lists of learning outcomes. Furthermore, for qualifications of this sort - which includes NVQs, BTECs, and so on - students have been required to achieve all specified learning outcomes in order to be awarded the qualification. We call this the 'mastery' requirement, indicating that students are required to master the vocational curriculum. Mastery is often assumed to be important for occupational qualifications, where a certificate is intended to certify 'full competence'. However, the roots of the mastery requirement in vocational qualifications were actually as much educational as occupational, linked to North American scholarship on mastery learning. This seminar considers the move away from the outcomes-based approach to qualification design, and mastery is no longer an expectation for an increasing number of vocational qualifications.