Skills Passport Scheme

[kevin wooldridge]

I must say that this was the area that vexed me too. Given that we're talking about archaeology and archaeologists, it's going to be nigh on impossible to find assessors whos opinions will be worth a foetid dingo's kidney to anyone else in the profession.

I don't see that a sign-off on a Skills Passport is any more or less open to question than a written or verbal reference given as part of a job application. If the person reviewing the application has a greater or lesser opinion of a reference from J.Bloggs of Borsetshire Archaeology over F. Bloggs from Deep-City Digging, that would be their prejudice irrespective of a skills passport or not.

Unless I have totally misunderstood the scheme, surely the point of a skills passport is to be certain that new entrants to the profession have acquired the basic elements of filed skill; those we all tend to believe are not taught in universities. Anything more than that is verging into the territory of professional qualifications.....not that I'd be against those, but I am not sure that the profession as a whole would be willing to bear the cost. And either way we would still have to accept that most of the current incumbents of archaeological posts could not be asked to 'requalify' for their posts, irrespective of how disparaging anyone might be of their current skills or less than obvious talents.