21st November 2005, 01:38 PM
Quote:quote:Originally posted by kevin wooldridge
Surely the highest level of IFA membership should be attained by those who subscribe to and abide by the Rules and Codes of the Institute.
This should be (and I thought is) a minimum requirement for PIFA standard.
I fear the real problem with the current IFA bands, and what I was aiming at with the question, is that the bands effectively relate to job titles/descriptions. If you take responsibility for an area of a site/part of a report/sequence of post-ex processing etc, you are supervising and therefore your job description, if not your job title, tallies with AIFA and given the length of time doing that you can attain AIFA. Same goes for MIFA. This comes to your point about "making distinctions between site assistants, project managers and any grades in between largely irrelevant...". I don't agree with this point. It is perfectly possible to improve as a site assistant without neccessarily taking on more responsibility. I'm thinking of examples like doing short courses in pottery/bone identification etc. None of these would make you a specialist in the purest sense of either discipline, but would improve the individuals performance on site without automatically making them more responsible for their work. With regard to CPD, all memebers and non members should be involved to the improvement of the workforce. A change in corporate level within the IFA shouldn't be seen as some automatic reward for doing what you should be doing anyway to keep up to date. While it may not be compulsary, if you apply to the IFA you do have to demonstrate you have a CPD plan.This would be the real problem with automatic promotions and would surely compound the existing percieved preference for office based archaeologists who could undertake short courses etc relatively easily and still wouldn't have to go out on site - which is what most grumbles are about.
Achingknees - surely hardhat badges would be best (easier to put on take off, available in a range of fetching colours and wouldn't require mam involvement?)
Haec olim meminisse iuvabit