Hi, I have just joined Iosh. I've just finished the Nebosh Level 3 national general certificate in occupational health and safey and am thinking about doing the diploma. Am not sure whether to stay with Nebosh or switch to City and Guilds. Does anyone have any advice?

Thanks

Sarah

Hi Sarah

To add to the sound advice that Brian has given the choice might be influenced by what your job entails and how much scope you have for the the tasks to be expanded to give you a range of risk scenarios to assess - to enable an NVQ portfolio to be largely the product of your day to day work.

NCRQ is different as it takes you away from your comfort zone by giving you a series of assignments based on mostly real scenarios that are likely to be from sectors other than that you work in, but to enable you to use your transferable skills and experience.

I have two current mentors who have been doing the Level 6 NCRQ. One has sailed through and has just completed their Diploma. The other is struggling to find the time [which might be largely due to an unsupportive employer], but because of the words in square brackets, they probably wouldn't do better via some other route.

P

Chris – always useful to here other people’s  view and im not saying any one route is better than another. Having fallen into H&S from university I tried the NEBOSH diploma route about 30 years ago via distance learning, at that time it was 4 exams Risk Management (which I passed) Occupational Health (which I failed 2x) I think the 3rd was Law( which I also failed) and the 4th was a case study (never sat) so I know its changed a lot since then. My training provider was giving me borderline distinctions in test papers (and no I was not cheating) so I finally gave up in frustration. Funnily enough talking to people in my final exam some people were sitting the exams for the 4th or 5th time. I would always advise anyone going with a training provider not just to check pass rate but also ask about their ability to predict a pass.

Fortunately at about the same time Portsmouth University introduced its PGc/MSc programme. I was on the 1st year of the course, 4 case studies which had to be backed up with references from other studies and 2 exams. This very much suited me as it was closer to the style of learning/examination from my BSc.

As you say at level 6 you soon realise that not everything is black and white – lots of gray areas.

We all have different experiences – but as I say I don’t believe any route is “better” than any other – neither do I believe any route guarantees a “stronger practitioner” than any other – you get good and bad no matter how they get there.