“Not every person with a qualification can be regarded as a professional”
This is becoming something of a mantra when explaining what it is a Professional Body stands for. A Professional Body is not a Training Provider and SAQA has done itself a disservice surely, by allowing Training Providers to register as Professional Bodies?
Just look at the Websites of many a SAQA-Registered Professional Body and you will quickly conclude that far from being a Professional Body, that organisation is nothing other than a glorified Training Provider and mediocre at best as a Training Provider because good Providers do not aspire to become Professional Bodies.
A Neutral Professional Body enhances a good Providers Status and demand for that Providers services. They have a keen and clear understanding of the boundaries and have no desire to cross those boundaries. A compromised Professional Body does nothing to enhance that status.
Greed
And then there are the hyenas for whom avarice and greed reigns supreme.
To the extent that fleecing unsuspecting bushy-eyed students out of what is often their parents hard-earned income is not sufficient. They have to capture those students within the web of Designation, Continuous Professional Development and Re-Registration. A web of deceit and fraud that becomes a never-ending catch 22 for the unsuspecting candidate.
Rationale
The question here is why.
If SAQA has gone to the trouble of registering Professional Bodies they almost proudly have determined that they will play no quality assurance role in keeping those Professional Bodies on the straight and narrow?
(I ask this question as a member of the original commission which created the Professional Body Framework for SAQA. By now I would have expected to have seen SAQA’s seriousness to make a difference reflected in the maturation of that original Policy Framework. That appears sorely lacking.)
Professional status
What makes for true Professional Status is varied and complicated.
Firstly, that Status is awarded for…
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Read this article by Dr Ivor Blumenthal, CEO, ArkKonsult (Consulting to business associations and professional bodies and corporates on BBBEE and People Development), as well as a host of other topical management articles written by professionals, consultants and academics in the December/January 2017/18 edition of BusinessBrief.
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