Accredited Courses vs Training Packages
It is a given fact that in order to get ahead in life, one is in need of certain educational qualifications as well as skills. Recognizing these needs, the world has come up with various means to satisfy these requirements and introduced various courses and training facilities for the purpose. However, one must keep an eye out for such means and make sure that the outcome is indeed, of a good quality. Accredited courses and training packages are two such means that have sprung up in answer to the world’s growing needs in quality training requirements.
What are Accredited Courses?
An accredited course is a course that has been approved by a quality assurance process that evaluates the operations and services of educational programs or institutes. The accreditation of such courses in most countries is done by a government organization such as the ministry of education. An accredited course requires supporting material such as a curriculum but does not provide an individual with the full suite of resources that is needed in assessment and delivery. In order to create an accredited course, one needs to establish a need for the course and must ensure that it does not duplicate the same qualifications from an already existing training package.
What are Training Packages?
A training package can be referred to as a set of qualifications, standards and guidelines that can be used to assess and recognize the skills of the people. Developed to meet the training needs of certain industries, training packages are developed by Industry Skills Councils of that country. The function of a training package is not to provide education or training. It merely prescribes the outcomes required by a workplace.
There are three endorsed components to a training package. They are competency standards which are a set of benchmarks used to evaluate the knowledge and the skills that an individual must showcase in order to appear as competent. Assessment guidelines check whether an individual’s performance meets the Competency Standards while qualifications framework is the sum of the Units of Competency and all the qualifications for an industry required for each needed qualification. In most countries, these are highly streamlined by national bodies. In Australia, you can get information about any training package from the Department of Education Employment and Workplace Relations, which is known as the official national register of information on qualifications, Training Packages, Courses, registered training organisations and Units of Competency.
What is the difference between Training Packages and Accredited Courses?
At a first glance, the two may seem similar. While both are nationally recognized and subject to the quality and regulatory frameworks of a country, some differences exist between the two which sets them apart.
• While training packages cover most training needs and ensure that they are effectively monitored, accredited courses cover the areas in which training packages do not provide services. Where there is coverage for a certain area on training packages, accredited courses cannot be developed.
• Training packages have progressively replaced accredited courses over the years.