As would-be H&S Advisors surely want to achieve Chartered IOSH status asap, is the NEBOSH General Certificate (NGC) now a thing of the past for them?

The NGC costs a lot and requires a lot of time and effort to do.

It is far from easy to do and the introduction of the New Open Book Examination still maintains its very high standard of completion.

Why spend a lot of time and effort on something when you can by-pass it by achieving a similarly recognised qualification?

That qualification is the NCRQ Certificate which involves only online tuition and a number of assignments to complete.

It counts towards the NCRQ Diploma which is then acceptable for Grad IOSH membership.

Edited by user 23 January 2021 16:16:44(UTC)  | Reason: Subject adjustment

NEBOSH is very quickly becoming obsolete, which even they finally recognised and changed their style of exam and content.

The problem was that they were pretty much the only route to CMIOSH (again something which is not so much the must have it once used to be), but since the NVQ and NCRQ came along they become the preferred option for those that had the skills and knowledge but were just not good at or baulked at the thought of exams.

Having done NEBOSH and NCRQ I would recommend the NCRQ route to anyone and in fact would even go as far as to rate it higher than the NEBOSH for the simple fact that the NCRQ uses real life situations that you have to apply safety knowledge to, much like a Safety Manager would in the real world rather than how much can you remember and make sure you know the difference between describe and explain (I think NEBOSH even dropped those now!).

Its personal preference and they both give you the same result if you want CMIOSH and I think its great that people now have that choice.

I think that people are mixing up NCRQ with NVQ. In NVQ type qualifications you create a portfolio of evidence demonstrating that you are carrying out a particular job to a certain standard. The evidence is mainly derived from what you do during your normal job. NCRQ is assessment based but these assessment are intended to demonstrate that you have completed and learned certain training activities. So, they are more like exams than what NVQ does but unlike NEBOSH which has a  traditional emphasis on learning and regurgitating  “facts” , in NCRQ  you are presented with scenarios and cases studies and you have to demonstrate how you apply your training to those situations.   

I found NEBOSH very in depth, but also a test of how much info you can remember for the exam.  In my real world job I have access to books, google, charts etc.  There needs to remain a solid foundation on risk, but more real world.  The NGC3 template is shocking, and yet supposed to use it