Skills assessment: Road Transport Industry Training Board system of skills testing in action?

‘In some traditional craft apprenticeships there is a need to remove age restrictions and to place much greater weight on the attainment of recognised standards of performance. Tests of trainee performance after particular phases of training are already applied in certain schemes but we need to build on such developments and make them more general.’ So said the Secretary of State for Employment Jim Prior in the House of Commons recently. And his views are being echoed throughout Industry with more and more people agreeing that there is a need to train to measurable standards of skill. In fact the RTITB Skills Assessment programmes are specifically designed with this in mind and have been steadily developed since they were launched in 1975, following two years of closely controlled pilot tests.