31st January 2012, 01:32 PM
How will this scheme allow the personal and professional development of archaeologists? It is often argued that there is little career structure within archaeology and I can only see this worsening, and the gap widening between those archaeologists who are lucky enough to have a permanent job and those without.
Those with - may even see improvements if the IFA CPD programme is followed will have the opportunity to progress within the proffession
Those without - how will they ever get to the required levels to ever do more than move from unit to unit? They may be capable of writing up reports and running jobs but will never be able to suitably demonstrate these skills so how do they progress? Little or no resources are expended on casual staff and there is no incentive to train them
And what about those archaeologists (and lets face it these are hardly a minority) who are employed job by job to undertaken watching briefs, evals etc. They may never see the inside of the office and have minimal contact with the employers - they do a great job but would only ever be able to have the work on the basis of another person who is not involed with the day to day running of the site have a qualification. But because of the way that the system is set up they will not ever have the opportunity to gain that qualification themselves.
Those with - may even see improvements if the IFA CPD programme is followed will have the opportunity to progress within the proffession
Those without - how will they ever get to the required levels to ever do more than move from unit to unit? They may be capable of writing up reports and running jobs but will never be able to suitably demonstrate these skills so how do they progress? Little or no resources are expended on casual staff and there is no incentive to train them
And what about those archaeologists (and lets face it these are hardly a minority) who are employed job by job to undertaken watching briefs, evals etc. They may never see the inside of the office and have minimal contact with the employers - they do a great job but would only ever be able to have the work on the basis of another person who is not involed with the day to day running of the site have a qualification. But because of the way that the system is set up they will not ever have the opportunity to gain that qualification themselves.